The Reluctant Alchemist's Guide to Thedas
by aethernitri
Summary: A modern-day historian tries to survive Thedas by wit, chance, and the skin of her teeth at the questionable edges of the Inquisition. Updates: once every 10 days or so.
1. Chapter 1: D is for Deathroot

_EXTENDED SUMMARY:_

Margo Duvalle likes her quiet academic life just fine. Her research on the history of botany is going well - until she finds a strange manuscript in the local special collections library. What starts as a promising source for a new article leads to a series of unfortunate events that result in Margo finding herself in a strange world - and in a stranger's body. Soon, she is swept up by the violence that has gripped Thedas. Now, at the questionable edges of the Inquisition, Margo's life is increasingly tangled up with an organization that hangs by a thread, and its unlikely young leader whose uncanny abilities and unorthodox religious views might end up upending everything, for better or for worse. Saving a world is a thankless task — but who will save Thedas from its heroes?

 **All characters except OCs belong to Bioware.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: D is for Deathroot**

 **Content warning: this chapter references sexual assault.**

"Aconytum... Aconytum."

Margo stared at the yellowed parchment page with dull-minded ferocity. The staring lent no discernible result, safe for the bleary vision and thunderous headache gathering steam somewhere at the back of her skull.

"That's not an aconite, it's a delphinium, you mindless git."

For the most part, Margo loved ancient botanical treatises. The delicate scroll, the dry smell of parchment, the beautiful, minutely detailed hand-drawn illustrations. This one though, was an exception. As far as botanical treatises went, it sucked. And trying to translate said treatise at 10pm at night, after she had taught two lectures and one review session and was wrung out, sucked especially thoroughly. She could barely make out the plant names, likely transcribed by someone with only a marginal grasp of the subject matter, and even less aptitude.

The manuscript was anonymous, of course. As far as Margo could tell, it was likely a copy of a copy, commissioned by some provincial abbot to supplement some boondock monastery's piddling curriculum, and, judging by the abundant mistakes and heinous drawings, executed by a perennially drunken monk.

Margo decided to call him Brother Rufus.

That hadn't stopped the rare collections librarian from treating the manuscript like it was Paracelsus's lost formula for the elixir of eternal life.

"This is a very precious text," the pearl-wearing paragon of propriety had imparted on Margo, her platinum bob staying eerily immobile despite the unmistakable head shake of preemptive disapproval. Margo had nodded sagely.

Sure it was.

She should have felt grateful that it was even available. It wasn't like her new article on medieval materia medica trade routes was going to write itself without original sources. But there were original sources, and then there was Brother Rufus's magnum opus of mediocre drawings and bullshit plant names. The poor sod couldn't even identify an aconite properly.

Margo turned the page. Stared.

And then stared some more.

Brother Rufus wasn't just drinking, she decided. He must have been digging into the Datura supplies.

The drawing was poorly traced, and the ink had leeched into the paper over the years, but the picture looked more like some kind of sea creature plopped out of the water and left to putrefy – a mass of dark tentacles with some vaguely hostile looking red dots speckling the entire arrangement. Might have been berries, might have been eyes, for all Margo could tell. Either that, or Brother Rufus had spat out some wine on the page. Probably nose spat it, Margo decided, considering the slightly bumpy nature of the splatter. Centuries old wine mixed in with some dead monk's mucus.

What could be better?

There was a scribble next to the drawing which looked vaguely like a plant name annotation, but only if you sort of crossed your eyes and squinted at it sideways. Darth Rot? That didn't sound right. She snapped a picture of the text on her cellphone and ran it through the sharpen algorithm of her photo software. It didn't lend a stark improvement, but…

"Ok, Brother Rufus, what the hell is a Death Root?"

She turned to the next page. The drawing featured therein didn't exactly ameliorate on the previous entry. It had a cyan-colored tip and a fleshy base and looked like… Well.

"Alright. What shall we call you? I vote for Orc's Rod."

There was the distinct sound of someone clearing their throat. Margo looked up. To say the librarian's expression was disapproving would be like saying that leprosy was a chronic skin condition.

Margo schooled her face into something she hoped was appropriately chastised. The inscription next to the "plant," if one could call it that, was surprisingly legible at least. Really, though? "Deep mushroom?" As opposed to what, shallow mushroom? She sighed. Why don't we just cut to the chase, and call it "Some Fungus."

The next page didn't have any botanical drawings, but a kind of addendum, or perhaps commentary, by the otherwise anonymous Brother Rufus.

"Taken from the Compendium of Ines Arancia, Foul Beldams and Loose Mistress who is't shouldst has't been burn'd at the Stake f'r h'r naughty Ways and unholy Cons'rtion with the Flibbertigibbet, and did punish duly as wast pleasing and prop'r."

Margo frowned.

"Fuck you too, Brother Rufus."

"Ms. Duvalle! Please watch your language in the library."

Margo looked up again. "My apologies."

It probably wasn't a good time to remind the librarian that it was Dr. Duvalle, but it still chafed.

She got up, taking the tome with her.

"Ms. Kostinsky, do you happen to have anything on this Ines Arancia this manuscript mentions?"

The librarian looked at her with thinly veiled disdain and pointed her chin at the computer – itself a medieval artifact – and its supposed electronic catalogue.

"Have you tried to run a search?"

"I haven't, but…"

"We are closing in ten minutes. Would you like to return that?"

It wasn't really a question. Margo relinquished the tome, and went back to her desk to gather her stuff. There was a strange tingling sensation in her fingertips – not an itch, exactly, but a kind of dull throb, like the precursor of a burn.

She walked out of the library into the frigid night air. The snowflakes were twirling in the light of the single street lamp.

Her car was parked a good fifteen minutes away from the university library, and she bundled her coat against the chill, steeling herself for the walk. She wished they'd change the street lamps. The new lights were on the duller side, apparently for the sake of energy efficiency. At least, this part of town was mostly quiet, and heavily policed by the university cops.

The burn in her fingers was getting more uncomfortable. She wondered if it was an allergic reaction – perhaps to a compound that had sealed the manuscript's ink or had been used to treat the paper? She should have used her gloves.

She'd wash her hands when she got home. And then cuddle in bed with Mindy, the feline terror. Although the little furry traitor was probably sleeping on Jake's fold-out couch, while he was weathering another explosive breakup in her tiny apartment. Her brother has always been better with cats than with women.

She'd settle for a glass of Merlot and Netflix instead.

Her mind returned to Ines Arancia. She wondered who she had been – and how the inept monk had gotten his hands on this Ines's Compendium, from where he had copied the strange plant entries. If only she could track down the original, this could actually be quite interesting.

She was absorbed in her thoughts, which meant that she wasn't paying attention when the man in the leather jacket turned into her street and fell in step behind her. Even when the footsteps quickened, their staccato rhythm bouncing off the brick wall of the warehouse along which she was walking, it took her too long to register the danger, as if through a fog.

And then the wind was knocked out of her. She fell to the ground, hands thrown out defensively to try to stave off the impact with the pavement. The shock resonated through her bones, making her teeth clatter in her head. Before she could recover, someone grabbed her hair, and yanked her forward, then back up unto her feet. She tried to scream, but got a mouthful of leather glove. It tasted like stale cigarettes and gunmetal.

She tried to kick out with her foot, but it didn't connect. She was launched into the brick wall, and then the bastard body slammed into her, a hand fumbling at her jeans, the cold sharp press of a knife at her throat.

"Don't move, little bitch," he breathed into her ear, the air around him rancid with unprocessed alcohol and the acrid, metallic tang of cheap cologne.

She didn't waste her breath trying to argue, but kicked out again, and this time there was a satisfying meaty thump, and she ducked out and to the left, out of the knife's way.

She ran. She could hear her attacker lunging after her, but she fixed her eyes on the blue light of an emergency phone, all the way up the street, so she sped up, lungs burning with gulps of icy air.

She almost made it. He caught up to her some fifteen feet away from the blue beacon. When she realized she wouldn't outrun him, she turned around. Later, much later, when all of this is over, she will struggle to remember his face, and can't.

She dodged the first blow, and yelled "Help!" at the top of her lungs. And then, belatedly, "Fire!" Because crowd psychology was predictable when it came to women being attacked in the street.

The second blow landed on her stomach, connecting. She doubled over, with the sudden clarity that she was probably going to die, and that her hands for some reason were glowing green. They felt very hot, itchy, and like they should be put to some kind of use, though she couldn't quite fathom what – a weird thing to worry about under the circumstances. For an irrational second she thought of Ines Arancia, "Foul Beldams," and wondered if she did end up getting burned at the stake, as per Brother Rufus's suggestion, but then a pair of hands closed around her throat, and she couldn't breathe.

She tried to kick her assailant in the nutsack – because if ever someone had it coming - but he was expecting it, and her kick landed on his thigh instead. Dark spots bloomed, ate away at her vision. Her hands were on fire by then, though the fire felt cold and almost astringent, and Margo had the sudden, unwelcome insight that the pages were probably coated in some sort of plant toxin. Her mind, fuzzy and distant by that point, hurled towards the bottom of the cone of darkness, and at its center a greenish glow beckoned. A voice whispered something important. Well, not a voice, exactly, more like a sense of intent.

It told her that it could help.

It told her to stop struggling, and to just let it through.

It told her that it too had struggled.

It told her that it could give her justice.

Distantly, as if in another world, in another lifetime, her back hit the pavement. She felt the sudden cold bite of winter air on her bare thighs.

And so, with what remained of her awareness, she forced herself to move over, and to let the whispering thing come through.

A sensation of being turned inside out, and then falling down the tunnel while something else – something distinctly alien and so profoundly wrathful she had no words for it - rushed by, and before she reached the bottom of her free fall, she saw her body shoving its hands wrist-deep into her attacker's chest.

Her clawed hands.

Except not her hands anymore, because she was airborne, and then torn through some kind of cosmic membrane with a sound of ripping fabric. A sense of something vast and incomprehensible and distinctly non-Euclidean warped her mind to the breaking point and then past it, and then she plummeted into a darkness tinged with that same acidic green light.

* * *

When Margo comes to, there is a room, the smell of wood smoke, and a pungent, but not altogether unpleasant aroma – like inula and camphor, with an underlying spice she can't identify. Something like nutmeg, but more bitter. The smell is reassuring, somewhere half-way between medicine and incense.

When she tries to move, her body feels strange – like it's not quite sure it fits her. And then, the vertigo passes, and everything snaps into place. She sits up.

She is covered with a rough woolen blanket that smells of sheep. And underneath, she is naked. And this is definitely not her body.

"What the actual fuck?" she manages, and then a movement catches her eye.

"Good. You are awake" a man utters, the voice amused, but mild. "That is one less casualty than we have thought."

She pulls the blanket more securely around herself, and looks him over. He's slender, long, bald, and has pointy ears. And he is most definitely not human. Humanoid, yes. But this is not, as far as she can tell, the same sub-species. Like, say, mugwort to wormwood. Both species of Artemesia, two quite different plants.

"Is this a dream? A hallucination?" She swallows. While she's on a roll with the rhetorical questions, she might as well get the big one on the table. "Am I dead?"

"You most certainly were dead, so I must admit I am pleasantly surprised at your unexpected recovery."

She swallows. Her throat feels parched, and there is an ache in her side.

"What killed me?"

"A demon, I would guess."

"A what, now?"

"A demon." The amusement fades from his eyes. "We lost too many soldiers in the battle. We brought our wounded back, but many more I fear will not recover. Our medicine supplies are short, and there are too few mages in Haven to help the healing."

There is a strange sing-song quality to his voice that lulls her into accepting the statement as is. Before, of course, its meaning actually reaches her brain.

"Battle? Um… did you say mages?"

He simply nods, and then stands up.

"Rest. You were badly damaged, and it will take time for you to recover your faculties. I have more patients to see before the day's end."

"I…" She thinks. This doesn't feel like a dream, but even if it is, mindlessly gaping won't get her anywhere. She should be in a state of shock, but she is not. Her body - which isn't hers - is tired, but sedate.

"I think I have memory loss. I am not quite sure…what or who I am."

Which isn't a lie. The man stops, and walks back to the bed, crouching next to it. He brings his face close to hers, and at this distance, the slight difference of his physique feels less pronounced. Margo forces herself to remain still, to stand her ground. She tries to consider his features analytically, as if he were a painting, or a statue from a bygone era. She tries to decide whether he is handsome, but the differences snag at her perception too much for that.

"I can tell you that you are a warrior. Based on your weaponry, you are trained in stealth, and wield daggers. I thought I saw you kill a rage demon, but not before it struck you. Though its remains were nowhere to be found when I got to you. You were dying. I did what I could to repair the damage, but I hadn't thought it would be enough. And others needed my help."

His grey eyes seem to cloud over, like he's stepping away and deeper inside of himself.

"All decisions are sacrifices, are they not?"

Margo thinks back at her body dying in the alley, at the hands of some anonymous asshole. About the call for her to "let it through." About her hands, no longer her own, ripping into a chest.

"I suppose. Is that all you can tell me?"

"Besides this, I can only tell you the obvious. You are skilled at war, but not skilled enough to not get mauled in battle. Though this is ill luck as much as flaws in training. Do you recall your clan?"

She blinks at that.

"You do not strike me as a city elf. Your body is clearly honed for physical activity." She thinks there's a twinkle of humor there, but it's gone before it can settle into something more definitive, and he is back to neutral. Good, because she is distinctly not in the mood for insinuating jokes. "I thought you Dalish." He frowns at that. "Though you are unmarked, so perhaps not. In any case, your memory will likely return in time, and you will solve that mystery yourself."

He gets up, very clearly done with the conversation.

"I have another difficult patient to care for, and if she does not make it, then I fear things will truly become desperate. When you are sufficiently recovered, seek out master Adan. He is as likely to blow you up as he is to prescribe you the correct tonic, but I would take the chance. Your ribs will keep paining you without an elfroot infusion."

"Thank you, uh…"

"Solas. Mend well."

When the door closes, Margo throws off the blanket. There is no mirror, but a wash basin stands next to the bed, its water dark. As a reflective surface, it's enough to get an idea of her appearance. The face that stares back is not her own. It has high cheekbones and large grey eyes, instead of her hazel ones. Its hair is flaxen, and tied back in a braid. It is younger than her, but not by much - late twenties to her 31. There is dried blood caked around her hair line. This body is shorter, narrower, with clear but lean muscles and a criss crossing of new and old scars. A bad one, pink and raised, bisects her abdomen.

And her ears are pointy.

"Who the hell are you?" she asks the water.

She is still naked, so she looks around the room. There is a set of clothes on top of a chest, and unless she wants to wander around in the buff, she better tackle them. Fortunately, they are functional enough that everything makes sense. And they are comfortable. A simple set of soft leather pants, cotton shorts of some sort that she assumes are underwear, a set of three bandages that she decides are for wrapping: one set for her chest, two for her feet, in lieu of socks. A linen shirt and a fur lined leather coat, well worn, with the strong smell of wood fires. It takes a few tries with the bandages, but the rest proceeds smoothly.

She notices the book when she's looking for a pair of shoes. It's propped on a shelf, its spine worn and a little greasy from handling, the gold lettering almost faded, but legible.

When she deciphers the author's name, the feeling is a nauseating mix of relief and dread. She supposes this is what "awe" feels like. The spine reads "The Botanical Compendium." By Ines Arancia.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by Ines Arancia, Foul Bedlams.

Next up: A new world.

 _AUTHOR'S NOTES:_

Welcome to RAGT! I am slowly porting this story to ff, while also doing some back-editing, so thank you for your patience on the updates. Now, as it stands, Reluctant Alchemist is already a very long fic (300k+), so while you decide whether to commit to a doorstopper, here are a few things to expect:

\- While the tone is primarily humor, the universe itself is very dark. I take some of the 'worst' choices that could have happened in the previous two games and combine them into a single particularly crapsack version of Thedas.

\- The OC is an overeducated, hyperactive smart ass, so expect unapologetic romps through philosophy, literature, science, mythology, folklore, social sciences, history etc. The OC has no prior familiarity with the games or the game world, and so is trying to make sense of it on its own terms

\- Romance and relationships are certainly there, but are somewhat secondary (or at least incorporated into) the plot. Relationship tags are meant to establish the pairings to help people avoid ones they might not want to read about. A quick note: while some of the main relationships I write are predictably complicated, none will be abusive, psychologically reprehensible, or "dark." Characters in romantic pairings make mistakes and butt heads, but by and large treat each other decently. If you're looking for relationship angst tinged with abuse, this story will not deliver.

\- This is a canon-compliant(ish) AU in that it tries to build an overarching explanation for what an MCIT would be doing in Thedas in the first place. Things are not what they seem, narrators are unreliable, outside-context problems abound, and "everything you've heard - completely true." RAGT follows the game's timeline relatively closely up until the end of Act I, then begins to deviate more dramatically. This will **not** be a straight-up retelling of the canonical story we all know and love.

\- If you would like a change from a predominantly Western European or North American folkloric base for your fantasy readings, this draws a lot on Central European and Slavic folklore and quite a bit on Central Asian religious practices and mythology (for reasons pertinent to the plot). So if you've enjoyed the Witcher series and/or Naomi Novik's Uprooted, this story might be for you.

\- I am not a professionally-trained writer, and use this platform to try out different genres and experiment with storytelling. As such, your comments not only warm my soul, but help me improve my writing. I appreciate the intellectual labor and time you put into composing them, and will usually respond and "chat back." :3


	2. Chapter 2: Uprooted

**Chapter 2: Uprooted**

She locates her boots by the door, and tucks the Compendium into her coat before pulling them on. They are wet and muddy from melting snow, and caked with a kind of rusty clumpy mix, like ash and dry blood. Come to think of it, that's probably exactly what it is. They are still dry inside, so Margo files that away as a win.

She stalls at the threshold. The air is brisk with mountain snow, but it has a layered richness to it underneath the crisp frost — wood smoke, roasting meat, a trace of sulfur and hot metal. She catches a whiff of manure, but even that isn't an entirely familiar odor. She has a vague suspicion that the beasts that produced the shit in question wouldn't be found in any zoology book she's ever seen.

And then she looks at the sky — and gapes. She has no way of describing it, really. It's like a giant cyclone hovering above the mountain, except that cyclones don't usually come in lime green. And there's something about it that looks wrong, and it makes her think of her itchy hands and of the nagging little voice-intent at the bottom of the death tunnel. _Let me in._

"Ain't Kansas indeed" she mutters, because hysterical sarcasm seems a better option than just plain old hysterics.

"Hey, knife ear!" She turns her head in the direction of the sound, and it takes her a second to decide that this is some form of address, and that it's directed at her. And that, judging by the leers, it's derogatory.

A couple of large dudes in – well, let's call a spade a spade – full armor, are milling about on a pair of crates next to a wall. It's hard to tell the time, but Margo guesses that it's creeping towards evening. Either that, or they're shirking whatever duties full armor presupposes in favor of some kind of game. Dice, she decides, though they're using what looks suspiciously like the ankle bones of some small animal. Well, at least some of the laws of physics are the same. There's gravity. The ground is solid, the sky is above, water is wet, strangers, conveniently, speak a variant of English. And assholes are a truly universal phenomenon.

"What are yer gaping at? You addled?" Tweedledee volunteers. He's poorly shaven, and sports a large plum sized bruise on the side of his face. Probably had it coming, too. His buddy – Margo decides he's the Tweedledum of the pair – just leers. He's missing a front tooth, and the gum might or might not be abscessed. "Go fetch some beer for your betters."

Margo briefly wonders if this is a gender or a species pecking order. She decides that it's probably both. Regardless, give an inch, loose a mile, so she plants her hands on her hips and hopes her patented withering stare, honed on recalcitrant students, will translate into – well, whatever body Margo Duvalle, PhD and body snatcher extraordinaire has been relocated into.

It doesn't quite have the desired effect.

"Definitely addled. Fetch. Us. Some. Beer. Wench." Tweedledee articulates with exaggerated slowness, and adds a gesture that mimes drinking.

"You think she's a mute, Merek? Lets see if she understands signs." Tweedledum points at her, and then proceeds to pat his crotch, and follows this up with hand motions that probably mean to convey copulation, but look more like he's trying to fit a large barrel around his privates.

What was the alchemist's name? Adan? She levels what she hopes is a cool stare at Tweedledum.

"If you're having troubles down there, I suggest you go see Adan and get a salve. Wouldn't want it to get worse, you know how these things can get. First you stick it in funny places, and then – _poof_ – it shrivels and falls off."

Tweedledum stares at her, agape, clearly considering what to do about the insult. The other Tweedle just bursts out laughing.

"You asked for that one. The Commander said no picking on the knife-ears, 'cuz we're all working together, what with the Breach and all. Though I say the sweet ass little elf can still go fetch us our drink, and look pretty doing it. Right, love?"

"Go fetch your own beer, you plum faced gibbon."

This, Tweedledee doesn't take well, though Margo thinks he's a bit confused about the whole gibbon bit.

The two start rising slowly, and she decides that antagonizing the goons was probably not the smartest strategy, but her uncle had told his army hazing stories when she was a kid, and from those she knows that it's better to get the beating out of the way early, but make it not worth the effort for the assailants on future occasions. She figures, same rules apply.

"Wow, wow, wow, lads, let's all settle down, and play nice."

The new addition to their little dog and pony show is probably four feet eleven, at best. He's stocky, blond, with a large square jaw and a crossbow the size of a hand-held cannon slung across his back. And he is most definitely not quite Homo Sapiens either. But he swaggers over, and plants himself right in between the two Tweedles and herself.

"What's this to you, Varric? She's just some elf."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong, my friend. She's not just some elf. She is one of the Nightingale's elves. Do you really want to piss off our Spymaster? I mean, don't let me stop you, it's your suicide, but being the altruistic man that I am, I'd advise against it."

That seems to give the Tweedles pause, and Margo decides to file this away for future reference. Nightingale, Spymaster. What does it mean that she was hers? Are elves slaves here? Servants? She's guessing both, but this, if nothing else, is an army. There might be other hierarchies at play.

"Come on, Prickly. Walk with me."

All things being equal, following this Varric seems like the best possible alternative among a range of shitty options. She walks besides him down the street, between the small wooden houses, towards a building that appears to be a forge. Behind it, against the evening gloaming, she can see the black outline of a trebuchet.

"Thanks for the help. Your name is Varric?"

He does a mock curtsey.

"Varric Tethras, storyteller, upstanding businessman, and dashing rogue — all at your service. And this beauty is Bianca." He gestures to the crossbow.

"Varric, Bianca. A pleasure."

He shoots her an approving grin.

"They're not all quite this bad, you know. These two are particularly obnoxious, but Commander Cullen is keeping most of his people more or less in check. Everyone's on edge, though — and just when we seem to have a shot at fixing this mess, it's not even clear that the Trevelyan gal will recover. You're new with Leliana, aren't you?"

Margo shrugs.

"Honestly, I don't know. I must have gotten knocked out during the battle… so I can't seem to remember much at all."

Varric whistles between his teeth.

"Amnesia, heh. Happened to someone I knew once. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, either. But you came through for me in that miserable pit. The rage demon popped out of the ground — as they tend to, pesky bastards — and he would've chewed off my head if you hadn't diced him first. Distracted it from Lady Travelyan and her green glowing hand of doom to boot, so we all owe you one. No wonder Chuckles has been fussing over you like a mother hen — he doesn't usually bother quite this much with the common soldiers. And speaking of Chuckles, there's someone who needs to sleep. He's practically keeling over, running around trying to heal everyone."

Margo tries to process all of this.

"Chuckles is Solas? And this Lady Travelyan, she is someone important?"

Varric nods.

"Looks like just another hothouse nobleman's daughter to me. Not a good fighter, either. Probably just your regular lordling spoiled brat, with more bluster than brains. But Seeker Pentaghast and our resident apostate seem to think she's going to solve this here problem we're having." He gestures vaguely at the sky. "Rare occasion when those two will actually agree on something. But she's been out of commission for several days, so I wouldn't hold my breath just yet."

Margo isn't sure what a resident apostate is — an apostate that gets a stipend, maybe? But she looks up at the sky.

"What is this? I take it it's not normal?"

Varric gives her a suspicious side glance.

"You did hit your head pretty hard, didn't you, Prickly. Well. No, normal is very far from how one might describe it. After the Conclave went up in smoke, along with everyone in it — this thing opened up and it started raining demons. Anyway, I'm the logistics guy — if you want a more philosophical explanation, I'd go harass Chuckles."

Margo nods. Sounds like whatever it is, it works as some kind of portal. To a hell dimension apparently. And it's impossible to believe, of course, except nothing about her predicament is believable either, and as far as explanations go, a hell dimension portal at least fits with the whole "and then my consciousness was ripped out of reality and ended up meat-puppeting a not-quite-human scarred warrior chick who is also, apparently, an elf. And possibly a spy."

"Varric, do you have a sense of where I would have kept my things?"

The man — gnome… dwarf…— shrugs.

"The tents out that way, probably. Though you were with the Nightingale's scouts, and I'm not sure where they're camped out. You should probably report back to her, by the way. She wasn't pleased when they brought you back all… mangled, and whatnot. Said you weren't meant to be out there in the first place."

Varric deposits her in front of the forge.

"We left your weapons with Master Harritt. Lets see if he's already pawned them off to someone else."

The blacksmith is a bald-headed fellow with a red beard and a handlebar mustache. Margo decides he would look especially memorable in a cowboy hat. He gives her a quick look, and then nods, as if answering a question that she didn't know she was asking.

"Got them right here. Sharpened them for you, too. They're nice pieces, not showy, but well balanced. Good steel."

He hands her two sheathed daggers and Margo decides that it would at least be a good idea to make a show of looking like she's used them before. She unsheathes one partially, and tries the blade with her thumb. It is most definitely sharp.

"Thank you for taking care of them, Master Harritt," she offers, politely. The harnesses are simple enough that she manages to strap them onto herself without too much embarrassment. She still notes Varric's curious squint at her fumbling. But it could have been much worse. There's a kind of muscle memory to the motion, where even though she doesn't know off hand how to do it, it is as if her body remembers.

"Don't mention it. You find yourself wanting something fancier, bring me some materials to work with, and I'll see what I can do."

She turns to Varric.

"I hate to impose on your time, but would you take me to… Leliana?"

Varric gives her a sly little grin.

"You know, Prickly, you sure can talk a fancy line when you want something. Ah, don't mind me. This is what friends are for. But you owe me a beer later."

Margo nods. She decides she likes the dwarf.

"Varric!"

They both startle, and Margo pivots to see where the holler is coming from. There is a tall, dark woman with a large sword at her hip bearing on them with the finality of an assault tank.

"Where are you taking her? Her patrol was scouting the Sword Coast before that whole mess with the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Leliana will want this information now — not in some undetermined future."

"Relax, Seeker. We're on it. But she won't be much help quite yet — she seems to have lost her memory."

This gives the formidable woman pause.

"Oh. I am sorry. This must be difficult." There's an awkward silence. "I am Seeker Pentaghast."

Margo shakes the outstretched hand, which crushes hers in a steely grip.

"A pleasure. I would tell you my name too, but…" she trails off, and shrugs. If you're going to adopt someone else's identity, might as well do it right, she decides.

This earns her a brusque nod and a dismissal.

"Bad blood between you?" she asks Varric.

He chuckles.

"Let's just say Seeker Pentaghast enjoys findings things about me that she can disapprove of."

They make their way through the little town, towards the looming temple at the crest of the hill. Varric points out a tent.

"Nightingale's in there somewhere. And that's as far as I go. I like to stay out of out spymaster's way as much as I can."

Margo shoots him a disapproving glance.

"Et tu, Brutus," she mumbles, and then catches herself.

"What's that, Prickly?"

"Fine, but now I only owe you a half-pint."

Varric laughs. "Like bargaining with the Carta. I'll catch you later."

Margo watches him waddle down the hill, and she tries to brace herself for what's to come. She has a distinct feeling that this Leliana is not someone to trifle with.

Inside the tent, it is barely warmer than outside. A thin red-headed woman leans over a map fixed to the wooden crate with a set of daggers. She doesn't turn around when Margo enters.

"Ah, it is good of you to come by. Charter spoke highly of you, I would have been disappointed if you had died. Please report on your mission."

Margo finds herself at a loss. There is no way she can bullshit her way out of this one — but then this Leliana isn't likely to tolerate inefficiency. There's nothing quite as sobering as the acute feeling of your own disposability.

"I… I was injured in the last battle, and have lost much of my memories" she tries. The redhead turns around and fixes her with a gaze that could pierce concrete, and then a couple of plates of Kevlar on top of it, just to make sure you knew it wasn't messing around.

"How very convenient for you, isn't it? Especially since the rest of your patrol to the Storm Coast didn't make it. So, you have nothing to say about the Qunari presence there, I suppose?"

Whatever the Qunari was, or were, it was at least quite clear that their presence was not a source of joy for the spymaster.

"No." She tries to think fast. It's funny how that never works out in practice. "Solas claims the memories will be back in time, but until then, I'm afraid I am not much use to you." All things being equal, better to state the truth.

Leliana levels her with a speculative gaze.

"Indeed not. But Solas also claimed that you had died, and later claimed that you would not recover, so I would not put too much faith in what the apostate claims."

Margo hides a wince. It doesn't require a PhD in history to realize that things aren't going well. The vassal of my vassal and all that. She is too ill informed about this place to navigate the underwater political currents, and if she doesn't learn it quickly, she isn't going to last the week.

Leliana leans forward. It isn't exactly looming yet — more like hovering alarmingly.

"There are very simple ways to find out whether you are lying. None of them are pleasant, of course. But if you are Charter's creature — as I am sure you are — then you know all of this already and have likely taken measures in anticipation. Unless, that is, you are an agent of the Qun."

With this conclusion delivered, the spymaster considers her with unpleasant interest, much like a crow when it's debating which eye to start plucking out first. Margo feels the ground shifting from under her feet, the unmistakable vertigo of true terror making her limbs go limp and her face turn numb.

"Unless you are simply a pawn in a game, and don't know your own masters… Memory loss can be simulated — up to a degree, of course. But it can also be induced, with magic. Or alchemy. Yes. This is a plausible explanation."

Leliana seems to come to a decision then.

"I would suggest that you recover your memories, and quickly. I need the information from your patrol. If you fail to do so on your own, you will receive some encouragement from me. Few survive that process. You have three days. I do not recommend trying to run, my spies will find you."

With that, the spymaster turns back to her map.

There is a crow croaking from a nearby roof, its call distinctly sarcastic.


	3. Chapter 3: A is for Alchemist

Summary: In which Margo gets a new job.

* * *

Margo walks down the hill in a daze, heart beating painfully in her chest. Her new body – and she's a bit unsettled by the fact the she's beginning to think of it in proprietary terms - is much better at processing adrenaline than her original would have been, but the sense of primordial dread hasn't just set up camp. At this point it's roasting marshmallows and telling dirty jokes.

What is the next step? There seem to be several power brokers here – Leliana and her network of spies is one, perhaps Seeker Pentaghast, and this Cullen fellow are the others. Solas and Varric appear to be lower on the food chain. She tries to make sense of it all, when a commotion starts around her. An elf runs by, screaming something about someone being awake. People are rushing back and forth in chaotic agitation, like a bunch of ants whose anthill got knocked over. She's jostled to the front of a quickly forming crowd.

Margo watches with the others, as a woman emerges from one of the log houses, and scurries up the hill. There are whispers all around her – something about an Andraste, and the fade, and something or other having to do with the breach, which she at least knows is the big nasty hellmouth in the sky. Also, some dude named Harold, whoever he is.

The woman walks by them, and Margo has a chance to get a look at her. Well, she wasn't expecting this. She's human and young – 18 or 19 maybe. Pretty, in a soft sort of way, without the compact lean hardness of many of the other soldiers she's seen here. She's wearing some kind of light armor, but it's out of place, like something more decorative than functional. No one needs a bustier like that if they're trying to slice someone's head off. Unless it's meant as a distraction tactic. And she looks…mortified doesn't even begin to cut it. Margo feels a sudden twang of sympathy. Every incoming freshman class has these girls, with their soft outer shell still so fragile, embarrassed at the slightest sign of attention. It sometimes takes a semester to coax them out, managing class dynamics so that they don't get trampled over by the louder kids in the group. Kids – and at this age, they are still barely out of childhood, really – can be the cruelest little shits when they sense weakness.

This isn't much different, she realizes. And the crowd, for all its awe struck whispers, is heterogeneous. There are many who stare with open speculation, and a few with downright hostility.

Then the woman is met by Seeker Pentaghast and a tall blond fellow with a strange sort of fur collar that looks like the beast it came from isn't fully convinced that it should be dead yet, and then the girl is ushered out of sight.

The crowd mills about for a bit, then begins to disperse.

Margo decides that her best option is to look for her body's belongings. Maybe there is a convenient and wonderfully detailed diary to be found, one that will expound in details on her host's biography.

Except, of course, she might as well get a divining rod, and go a-looking. She walks around the town, then around the camps a couple of times, hoping that someone would simply recognize her, but no one does. She asks about Charter, but no one seems to know where she is for sure. She makes eye contact with a few elves, but they just nod and go about their business. The sky is getting darker, and the camp seems to be settling in for the night. She watches small groups of soldiers walk over to the tavern. Even Varric is nowhere to be seen. Finally, an elf who looks like a kitchen worker, hauling a box of carrot-shaped vegetables that's almost as big as her tells Margo that Charter and her scouts are on patrol for a fortnight, based on the ration schedule.

"Two weeks?" Margo squeaks out, horrified.

"Apologies!" the elf mumbles, and flees.

She sort of stumbles upon the alchemist's hut, more by smell than anything else. The small courtyard is secluded and quiet, but the door remains ajar, letting out light and a steam of mixed odors – bitter and astringent, spicy and acrid, musky and sweet waft through the evening air. She hurries in.

There is a man leaning over an alembic, and even if she doesn't understand half of it, it's pretty clear he's swearing a blue streak.

"Master Adan?" she tries, hopeful.

"What?" He straightens and looks at her. Tall, dark, and grumpy, that one. And bearded. She wonders what's going on with the shaved head- full beard combo so many of the local men seem to be sporting. This doesn't seem to be a functional decision – if you can get a close shave on your head, why not just go to town and shave the whole thing off?

"Well, don't just stand there. Pass me the reagent – no, not that one, the blue one off the shelf. Yes, yes, the one with the white sediment at the bottom."

She walks over and lifts the bottle gingerly. The liquid inside is viscous, a deep cobalt blue. She doesn't dare uncork it before she passes it to him, but the alchemist – because that's what he is, a bonafide fucking alchemist in the flesh – doesn't seem to mind. He unstoppers it with his teeth, spits out the cork, and pours a healthy swig of the stuff. Straight down his gullet.

Margo stares.

"Should you be drinking the…um…ingredients?" she asks before she can think of a more diplomatic way of phrasing the question.

"No. But they don't pay me enough for this idiocy. Do I look like a healer to you? No. Does this place look like it sources enough elfroot for the amount of soldiers they're getting butchered every day? No. Give me something to blow up, and I'll brew you a mean grenade and you can go blow it up to your heart's content. I didn't sign up to play nurse maid."

Margo looks around. Dry herbs are stacked in large sacks along the wall. There are other things – minerals, animal parts, metal ores, and things that she can't even begin to identify lining all available shelf space. A work station of sorts with an alembic, a mortar and pestle, and a calcinator occupy a good part of the single room. She notices a rudimentary mill in the corner.

"You need a hand?"

She's not sure if this is the right move, but she doesn't quite feel like she has anywhere else to go. And at least, this space is familiar. Not the specific ingredients, maybe, but there are books on the shelves – quite a few by Auntie Ines, by the looks of it – and she has a photographic memory. Well, she had a photographic memory. She used to be able to learn this stuff fast. She's not sure about this body, but something must have carried over.

"I need twenty hands, but I'll settle for two. You're a herbalist?"

She frowns, wondering how not to oversell her knowledge without being told to scat.

"I dabble."

That seems to satisfy the guy.

"I'll take a dabbler any day over the cretins Cullen sends my way. I'm not always sure they can tell a plant from their own ass. Forget trying to send them for anything specific – they'll just bring back whatever they stumbled on first. Sometimes they bring me hay."

"Can I use your library to get myself up to speed? I…have some memory loss."

Adan's eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

"You're the contused one? The mage mentioned you, but by the way he described you, I thought you'd be…"

"What?"

He seems embarrassed for a second.

"Nothing, don't mind me. No offense, but you people have some strange metaphors."

Well, now she's annoyed. Because what she really needs on top of this otherwise phenomenal day is a bald-pated elf talking trash behind her back.

"Did he leave something for me? A tonic?"

"Nope. I usually have standard issue elfroot potion, but you can learn to brew that yourself in two hours if you don't already know how. You'll need to go gather the plants yourself, because I'm almost out. He told me to make a restorative draught – for your memory – but I'm too swamped. We can maybe tackle this tomorrow. If you help. I'll pay you, but not much. And you can sleep in the attic if you don't mind the bats."

She is so relieved and happy, she could kiss him.

"Are you kidding? I love bats. They are just the cutest. And if you wait for a long time, they'll make shilajit for you."

Adan gives her an incredulous look.

"You really are a strange lass, aren't you. They make what, now?"

Margo realizes this is probably not the right time to launch into an exegesis on Himalayan rock oil. But in for a penny, and all that.

"Do you have this stuff? It's very potent – it's this soft dark material that you sometimes find on cave walls. Looks like a mineral, but too soft?"

He gives her a suspicious look, but then his expression clears into something more enthusiastic.

"Wait, I knew a trader from Seheron once. He stocked something he called "Dwarven Oil." Fantastic stuff. Looks a bit like what you're describing, once you pry it out of the little jars they stuff it into – you say it's made by bats?"

He probably isn't interested in the biochemistry debates over shilajit, so Margo bites her tongue, and makes a non-committal affirmative noise.

"Huh. Well then, you interested? You'll need to get a go ahead from Cullen, though, and tell him not to send me more of his knuckleheads."

"Yes! I'll work hard, and won't bring you any hay unless you specifically request it."

"Best thing I've heard all day" he grumbles. "Which should tell you how my day's been."

She nods. "You and me both, buddy" she thinks to herself.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by "shilajit" or mineral wax, which is an actually existing really weird thing. And by Dwarven Oil, which I stole (borrowed?) from Skyrim.


	4. Chapter 4: E is for Elfroot

Adan, general grumpiness notwithstanding, is so pleased to have acquired a semi-competent helper that he shoves a plate of food at her as soon as it is brought on by a harried kitchen worker. Margo thanks him – and the elf – profusely, embarrassing both in the process, and proceeds to scarf down the grub. It's simple stew with bread – nondescript vegetables with unidentified meat – but it tastes like the best thing in the world.

She is really going to have to think about pragmatics. Like food. And money.

Dinner finished, she walks out of the cabin in search of the aforementioned Cullen, but not before having logged half of Adan's library up to the attic. She is tempted to simply settle in on the hay mattress and dive in, but it seems like it's a better tactic to play by the rules.

Most of the tomes are by Auntie Ines, and the scholar in her is perplexed by this. Her experience suggests that this place – whatever it is – should have a developed pharmacopeia. By Earth standards, they should be using hundreds of ingredients. Thousands of formulas. They clearly compound. They certainly have the equipment for complex processing, which suggests that the biochemistry of their drugs works by and large the same way. Distillation, calcination – hell, basic pulverization – all seem to proceed along at least somewhat familiar lines. So where is the scholarship? The many authors, the internal debates, the commentaries upon commentaries? The competing traditions? Unless Auntie Ines had some kind of ideological monopoly on the field. Was she a holy woman, where her writing took on the authority of scripture? Or is Adan just partial to her works? Maybe this is a lineage thing. She should have asked if he studied under her. But still, she needs a proper library. And a year sabbatical. Yes, a sabbatical would be nice, then she could really settle in and cross reference this shit. She won't have a computer to data mine the texts, but with enough time…

She is so absorbed by the prospect of analyzing the hypothetical formularies that she practically collides with the girl.

"Oh Andraste's Ashes, I am so sorry! I didn't see you! It gets so dark here at night, and I have no idea where the Apothecary is, and oh Maker, I didn't mean to… Oh, you're an elf! Not that I have anything against elves. Dad - I mean Bann Trevelyan – he always says you have to be good to elves because we have a historical debt to your people. Oh. I'm making a fool of myself again, aren't I?"

Margo blinks. This close up, the young woman is even shorter than she originally thought.

"And I didn't even introduce myself. I'm Evelyn Trevelyan. But you can call me Evie if you want, everyone at home does."

Margo smiles at her, she hopes reassuringly.

"It's nice to meet you, Evie."

"Do… Do you know where the Apothecary is? I'm supposed to pick up a tonic from Master Adan, but I haven't met him before, and I don't think I can recognize him based on Commander Cullen's description. Not that Commander Cullen's description is bad, I don't mean that! It's just that he said that Master Adan has a beard and robes. But they all have beards here. And what if he doesn't wear robes all the time. I mean, what if he changes into armor, or something? Then I wouldn't even know what he looks like, and then I'll just be running around asking random men if they're Master Adan, just based on the fact that they have a beard. And oh Maker, there are so many men here, so which one do I start asking first? And they all have beards. Or at least mustaches. What if Commander Cullen meant mustache, and not just beard? Does it count if they have just a beard, but not a mustache? If I at least knew what color beard he has, then I'd have somewhere to start, but then, Commander Cullen didn't say anything about color. Am I talking too much? Aunt Lucille says I talk too much, all the time, and that it isn't proper for a Lady, but how am I supposed to know when you're meant to be talking, and when you're meant to not be talking…"

She trails off and kind of deflates, her shoulders slumping, eyes downcast.

Oh dear.

Margo adopts her kindest motherly voice – which in this body, still sounds a little too much on the steely side, because lets face it, her host has a kind of gravely, smoky contralto. She can probably do sultry like nobody's business. Kind and reassuring? Yeah, not so much.

"Evie, slow down, honey. It's Ok. Do you want me to introduce you to Adan? I just met him, and he's … very nice."

But Evie, of course, picks up on that slight hitch of hesitation, because kids like her are extremely attuned to social cues, but don't quite know what to do about them yet.

"He's not very nice, is he? He's probably really busy, what with all the wounded here. But maybe he's also very busy and not very nice, and then he's going to get mad if I disturb him. There was a wounded soldier I saw and his wounds just aren't healing, and Solas said it's because sometimes demon wounds fester really fast, and then it gets in the blood and then… and then… and even magic doesn't work… I mean, I don't think Solas is visiting him much, so does that mean he's just going to lay there and not get better, ever? And…" - she whispers this - "And die?"

Hoo, boy. By this point, the girl is sniffling. That is a whole new level beyond "hothouse flower," to cite Varric. That's downright hydroponics. But to be fair, Margo feels for her. Whatever social world she came from, it seems even more removed from this place than Margo's own, if that's even possible.

"Alright, yes. He's not very nice, but that doesn't mean he's not a nice person. He's just sort of… grumpy and overworked. I'll introduce you two, and he's not going to give you any grief with me around." At least she hopes he won't. "You need a healing tonic, right?"

Evie just nods. Margo puts her arm around the girl to guide her back to the apothecary, and Evie leans into her, huddling for warmth as much as reassurance. You poor kid, Margo thinks. Speaking of uprooted and transplanted, she might not be the only one who isn't going to last a week around here.

They walk into the apothecary together. Master Adan is still fiddling with the alembic, and at this point, Margo's pretty sure he's using it for distinctly non-medicinal purposes, unless we count moonshine as an analgesic. Let's face it, an alembic is just a fancy word for a still.

"Master Adan? This is Evelyn Trevelyan, and she needs an elfroot potion."

"She does, does she?" Yup, the grumpiness factor hasn't gone down since the last time she saw him. She has a vague suspicion that Master Adan is a belligerent drunk. "Well, tough nug nuggets! I am all out. Which brings me to the whole point of our arrangement – I need more elfroot. So make yourself useful. Here, that can be your first assignment. Go and gather some, boil a draught, and give it to her Ladyship here."

At this, he turns around and back to his moonshine experiments.

Interesting class dynamics. She's pretty sure Leliana would want to know about the grumbling proletariat, but she's not about to go run reporting to this world's female version of Comrade Beria any time soon.

Margo assumes they've been summarily dismissed, but no. "Oh, and while you're at it. Master Taigan was working on something… interesting before the old man went off and met his Maker. His house is out that way." Adan gestures vaguely in what Margo is pretty sure is a random direction. "See if you can find some notes on this, and bring them back. He's got elfroot growing around there somewhere, too – how he's managed to plant it on this snowy rock is beyond me, but who cares."

She exchanges a glance with Evie who, by this point, looks equal measures terrified and demoralized. She winks at her, hoping Master Adan doesn't notice.

They walk outside. The little courtyard is so dark you can barely see the walls of the nearby houses. She looks overhead, but can't spot many stars – the glow from the hellmouth cyclone overpowers everything.

"We should probably wait until tomorrow morning to venture out, right?"

Evie looks torn.

"I think Solas is going to be really mad at me if I don't drink my medicine. But…"

She hesitates, and starts fiddling with the hem of her not very practical armor. Who the hell wants to fight in a corset, anyway?

"Do you think it's really far, this house? Like, maybe it's not that far, and we can just go there really quickly. But wait, what if it's outside the enclosure? And what if there are beasts there. Like bears. Do you think there might be bears?"

Margo considers this.

"Not this close to the camp. Even if there were bears, I'm going to bet they've all been killed, skinned, and eaten. Oh, I should ask Adan if he uses bear bile. That's a good one, bear bile. It's very common in most pharmacopeias, unless you have some compunction about using animal parts, which I don't think he does…"

She catches herself. Evie looks downright crestfallen.

"I'm scared of bears. They're big, and they have these huge claws, and Bann Trevelyan says they are very dirty claws, so even when the bear just scratches you…"

"Alright. How about this..." She considers her options. It's not like she has much of a chance to stand up to a bear – or anything else that's of the large carnivorous persuasion – but in the grand scheme of things, she's pretty sure that all the large carnivores in the vicinity would have been either driven out, or put to good use.

"I owe Varric a half-pint, but I don't have any money to buy it. So you and I are going to make a deal. You're going to have a half-pint with him in my stead, and I'm going to go look for elfroot and this Master Taigan's notes on whatever he was playing around with. And if I find them, then we'll go to Master Adan, and you're going to give him the notes, so he gets off his high horse and stops being a colossal asshat to you."

Evie giggles. And then sniffles again.

"I've never heard this expression. It's funny. Is it Elven? Because it'd be kind of silly to put a hat on your butt, right? I mean, how would you hold it in place? You'd have to wander around sort of holding on to it, or it'll fall off. But I guess your butt would be warm, at least."

She sighs wistfully, and Margo realizes that the kid is so not dressed for the weather.

"Alright, lets go to the tavern. I bet Varric is already there."

She's right of course. The tavern is small, hot, and packed to the gills. She spots Varric at a table in the far corner. He's the only one she recognizes there, but he's already surrounded by a small crowd of soldiers, all of them well into their cups and laughing uproariously at something Varric is telling. Margo notices that he talks with his hands a lot.

"Prickly!" Varric calls out from his seat. "Where is my half-pint?"

Margo guides Evie to take a seat on the bench next to the dwarf.

"Varric, this is Evelyn Trevelyan. Have you two met outside of battle?"

The dwarf smiles amiably enough, but it doesn't quite make it all the way to his eyes. And then, it clicks. He's watching people very carefully, even as he distracts them with the whole jovial dwarf shtick.

Tricky tricky.

"I need to run an errand before I can come by. Would you mind keeping Evie company while I'm gone? I don't think it should take me more than an hour. And if it does, then send the cavalry, because I probably got into trouble."

Evie looks horrified at this.

"Yeah, yeah. Anything to get out of a debt. You sure you're not with the Carta?"

"As a matter of fact, since you bailed on me earlier, you technically owe me a half-pint."

Varric snorts into his beer, and then looks at her, eyes narrowed.

"Forget the Carta. You're sure you're not secretly a dwarf, Prickly?

The table explodes with laughter at this point, and one of the soldiers claps Margo summarily on the back. However different this world is, she gets this dynamic. This easy camaraderie. They're all working their asses off, and they get exhausted and unwind by drinking too much, because their lives are too precarious for thinking too far out into the future, and death stalks, a hair's breadth away.

"I'm good on my word, Varric. I'll come back in an hour, and you'll get your damn beer."

He looks reasonably appeased by this, so she jostles her way out into the night.

It's bitter cold outside, but at least the snow has stopped. The first person she runs into explains to her how to get to Master Taigan's old hut. She sets off at a comfortable run, enjoying her host body's athletic ease. She's still hoping that she won't run into any unwanted encounters on the way, but the night is quiet, safe for the far off howling of what is probably wolves. But it sounds far away, and in about fifteen minutes following a narrow path in the snow, she comes up on a log house.

Several tall vine-like creepers – that have absolutely no business standing upright based on their morphology – are growing out of the snowy crust around the cabin, and she pulls out Auntie Ines's Compendium for a quick check. Sure enough, the gravity defying flora is elfroot, according to Auntie's narrow, prissy handwriting.

She doesn't have a sack to gather them, but she wagers Master Taigan probably has something she can use.

Margo tries the door handle, and quietly cheers when it turns out to be unlocked. The inside is surprisingly warm, but dusty, a rich botanical smell lingering in the habitation. She trails her fingers along the top of a counter and brings her fingertips to her nose. Sure enough, the dust is mostly plant matter, still odorous. One room has a different smell, like saltpeter and sulfur, and she wonders if Master Taigan was experimenting with gunpowder. There are notes scattered everywhere. She begins to gather them, until she spots a knapsack lying in a corner. It has dry crumbling leaves at the bottom. She stuffs the writings inside, with a quick mental note to go over them before she hands them off to Adan. She wishes she had her cellphone, to photograph them. Or hell, a photocopier would be nice too.

The other room has several empty burlap sacks, folded neatly on a shelf. She grabs one, and leaves the house, with a small pang of regret. There are books here – much more than in Adan's apothecary – and she wonders if it would be a faux pas to appropriate them. Heck, she wouldn't mind requisitioning the entire house to herself, but she suspects that this is probably where Adan is staying, at least part of the time, when he's not getting sloshed on dubious booze. Although why he would send her to search for his Master's notes is beyond her if this is where he actually lives.

Unless he has another place in the camp, but how many houses can one alchemist have?

Outside, she makes quick work of the elfroot, using one of her daggers to dig them out of the frigid ground with a mental apology to Master Harrett. Her hands quickly go numb from the cold, and by the time she's done with filling one burlap sack, she's chilled to the bone, and shivering. She's not sure how much time has passed, so decides to head back rather than fill up the other one, because turning into an icicle from over-enthusiastic herbalism would be a pretty damn stupid way to die. The knapsack sits awkwardly over her dagger harnesses, but she needs both hands to carry her botanical haul.

The howling picks up again, and this time it seems alarmingly close. She speeds up, and then breaks into a light jog, trying to follow the same path she used before. She can see the stars overhead now, none of them arranged into familiar patterns.

There is a flash of yellow, and then another one, off to the left and closer to the flank of the hill that frames her path. She picks up speed, but two shadows separate from the darkness at the bottom of the slope, and begin to glide apace with her, some twenty feet away, but on a narrowing trajectory. At this point, she is running at a good clip, but the snow hinders her progression, and her footing is unsure on the slippery ice crust.

Another flash of yellow catches her gaze, straight ahead, and then a deep, low howl resonates somewhere off and to the right, from the direction of the ravine.

She realizes she's being herded.

The adrenaline gives her a jolt of energy, but she's not naïve enough to think she can outrun a wolf pack. As far as bad decisions go, this is proving a remarkably stupid one. This is how you don't even make it into the footnotes of history.

Something blue gleams ahead, and then a purple jolt of electricity that looks quite a bit like a lightning bolt strikes the ground ahead of her. The pyrotechnics are followed by a distinctly lupine yelp, and she feels more than sees a dark outline bound off in the direction of the ravine. No doubt to complain to its comrades about the unpredictable weather.

She doubles her speed – in the hopes that the old adage holds true, and lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot – and runs smack into a familiar elf with a large wooden stick. For a split second, in the dwindling blue afterglow that surrounds him, he looks ethereal. Except, of course, he's not, because when momentum carries her forward, the impact is anything but ghostly.

They do an awkward sort of twirl where they're both trying to keep each other standing, grabbing at each other's forearms for stability, but the entire enterprise fails, and she slips and collapses on her back, dragging him down with her. He lands on top of her with a soft "oof", nose to nose, and he is distinctly more solid than he looks. They stare at each other for a split second, and she vaguely registers that he has a rather sweet dimple on his chin, and a sliver of a scar on his forehead. And then he makes a flustered sound, and rolls off her, scrambling to his feet, and adopting a fighting stance. She follows him up, but not knowing what a fighting stance might look like in her case, bounces on the balls of her feet.

"I really think we should just run."

He doesn't seem to find much fault with that argument, and they scramble up the path, falling into step quickly. There is a sort of glowing circle around him that seems to maintain pace with them, and she wonders absurdly if he's carrying glow sticks for some reason, until her brain is forced to accept the idea that this is some kind of magic.

They skid into the camp's enclosure, both winded and gulping for air, but at least the howling, while unmistakably displeased by this turn of events, remains well behind them.

"Have you…" he gasps "lost all common sense, along with your memories?"

She wants to argue with him, but… Well. He's not wrong. Instead, she waves her burlap sack – which she is clutching in a death grip – by way of an explanation.

"I got carried away."

This does not seem to appease him. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Carried away? Carried away? One gets carried away looking at beautiful things. Or pouring over an old tome of ancient knowledge. One gets carried away at a lover's touch. One does not get carried away stuffing plants in a sack!"

Margo blinks at this tirade.

"You are taking this somewhat personally."

He exhales in frustration, and turns away, chin high, jaw clenched. The pose is kind of ridiculous, as far as pantomimes of displeasure go, but... It looks fairly organic on him. After a few seconds, his stance softens a bit.

"I take this personally because I did not go through all the trouble of putting you back together only to see you ripped apart by wolves."

Which, of course, begs the question of why he went through said trouble. Some kind of Homo Elveticus solidarity? Unless, of course, this elf and her host body had a history. Could this be the case? He did just mention lovers, which, as far as the whole tirade went, was a bit of a non sequitur. But he hadn't acted like they were particularly familiar earlier.

"I apologize. I…am not quite myself these days. Did we know each other well before I lost my memories?"

He squints at her, cautious.

"Not well, no." There is something assessing to his expression, like he is trying to figure out what might be inside a locked box just by shaking it. "Not better or worse than all soldiers here are familiar with each other."

Well, that was as vague a statement as it got. How familiar were the soldiers with each other around here?

"What were you doing all the way out there? I, at least, have an excuse."

She waves her sack again. The elf, bless him, looks only more disgusted.

"And a terrible one at that. Can Adan not send some of Cullen's men to do the grunt work?"

"They tend to bring him…the wrong things."

Solas cocks an eyebrow, and for a second there is a sparkle of humor in his eyes, which in the unsteady light of the torches, shine darkly.

Whatever humor tried to sprout, it is smothered under more peevishness.

"I like to walk outside of the confines of Haven. It clears my mind." He finally volunteers.

She examines him more closely. What is going on with all these people not dressed for the weather? But he doesn't seem to be suffering from the cold. In fact, he is walking around by and large bare foot. If this is a habit, his feet should look more like hooves, but they seem fine. Not even particularly blue. This climate resistance doesn't seem to be a species feature either, because she's still freezing, despite warm clothes and their recent run.

"Anyway, I should thank you. Both for patching me up, and for the assist with the wolves. Is there anything you need? Varric mentioned that you were overwhelmed with too many patients."

"Yes, Varric has a tendency to mention things." He doesn't seem too impressed by this fact. "There are too few healers here, but I must admit that I am confused by your offer."

At this, he steps closer, apparently searching her face for something. He doesn't go as far as to take her chin in his hand and start tilting her head every which way, but there's something about his body language that suggests he's sorely tempted to do just that.

"You are not a city elf. You speak too confidently, you do not defer and cower and apologize at every second, even when you are clearly at fault. But where is your Vallaslin? I thought, perhaps, it was too faint to see – a lighter hue - but you truly are unclaimed."

"I can't answer that question" she says. Because, obviously, she can't. She has no clue what a Vallaslin is, though evidence seems to suggest that it's either warrior paint, or, more likely, a facial tattoo.

"Because you cannot remember, or because you are unwilling? You are one of Leliana's scouts, are you not? Are you bound by the rules of your guild?"

Margo thinks about this. One way or another, she needs to learn about her host's life. If she cannot find her things – or if her host's things don't have anything useful by way of information that might appease Comrade Nightingale – the rest of her life here is going to be nasty, brutish, and short. Unless…

What it really boils down to, is whether or not she can trust this Solas character.

"I truly cannot remember. And I need to, because otherwise Leliana will go digging for the information she wants, and she didn't seem to think I'd particularly enjoy the process."

At that Solas makes a surprised little noise that sounds an awful lot like a chuckle.

"No, you would not."

"And in the interest of not wasting your labor in putting me back in a single piece, I was wondering if you knew of anything that might…jolt a body's memories?"

He narrows his eyes at her.

"A body's memories? Don't you mean to say your memories?"

She shrugs.

"That's a philosophical question, though, isn't it? Are our memories stored in our bodies, or our spirit? If they're stored entirely in our spirit, then how do you account for muscle memory, or any other embodied skill?"

He looks surprised, and then, slowly, his expression turns intrigued.

"That is an excellent question. So even if the spirit is damaged beyond the point where its memories can be accessed, you think the body retains an imprint of sorts of the spirit's life? I have not thought about this in such terms before." He's tapping his chin, and bouncing up slightly on the balls of his feet, and Margo smiles to herself privately. She knows that look. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the look of intellectual curiosity. She can work with that.

"It's a plausible theory, isn't it? So even if the spirit itself is, lets say, gone, the body must retain something of its past experiences, even if they aren't – well, tinged with emotions or particular context, I guess."

He gives her an incredulous look.

"Like with the Tranquil?"

She has no idea what he means, so she just nods, because the cogs are clearly turning in his head, and she doesn't want to interrupt this process lest she loses the opportunity to get some valuable insight on a possible solution to her predicament.

"And by spirit, do you mean any spirit?"

Uh-oh, they're getting into shakier ground. But if she can get herself relocated into an entirely different body and realm, and still, somehow, function…

"Theoretically? Yes, why not. Though my guess would be the longer you have a particular body – ahem, the longer a body and a spirit are paired up – the more the body's memories would directly reflect the spirit's experiences."

She smiles at him, because damn, for a second, this is so familiar that it almost feels like her old normal, and it's great to be able to simply stand there, pausing all the random other stuff you're in the middle of, and debate cosmological models.

Except, of course, this isn't a model. It's her new reality.

The look of curiosity on his face turns into one of sheer pleasure, and he returns her smile. And by that point she should probably be alarmed at the warm and fuzzy sensation that his expression sends down her spine, but she's too excited by the fact that he seems to be following her line of thought to really consider her reaction too closely.

"I must admit, I was not expecting this evening to end on a conversation about the hermeneutics of memory, but… Well, I will take a pleasant surprise where I can."

"Beats being eaten by wolves. And any time you want to debate hermeneutics, you let me know."

He chuckles softly at that, and by this point, Margo's definitely noticing her body's reaction to the quiet, smooth sound of it. Oh no no no. No developing crushes on random bookish elves that save you and your elfroot from the wolves. Bad brain… spirit… body…whatever.

She forces herself to snap back to the task at hand, which is to find out about the memory thing, and for a second she feels a little crass for pumping him for information. But he doesn't seem to mind, exactly, so perhaps no harm no foul.

"So how would you go about it? You mentioned that I died. What if my spirit is too badly damaged to recover the memories I need to… appease Leliana, especially not in three days. Is there a way to get these from my body, instead?"

She's hoping he'd point her to a formula – or, if she's really lucky maybe even a single ingredient. But instead he considers her carefully, his eyes narrowed, expression hard again.

"She gave you only three days to recover?"

Margo shrugs.

"Well, yes."

He grumbles something about work, and ingrates, and she's pretty sure something about blood sucking ghouls, but then his expression clears, and he seems to come to a decision.

"You will need to brew a draught beforehand, but there is something we can do that I think may help. Come see me tomorrow evening, and bring the brew. Do you have something to write on?"

She reaches into her coat and extracts the Compendium. He takes it from her, flips it to the last page, and then simply passes his hand over the yellowish paper. Margo leans in, reading the neat scroll.

"I am not certain that my recollection of the exact proportions is correct, but Adan might know it, and if not, experiment. It should taste like a standard regeneration potion, but with more bite, and the aftertaste is sweet. Even a bit cloying."

So, first things first, she will need to find out what a standard regeneration potion tastes like.

"What does it do?"

He considers this.

"My hope is that it would both enhance the efficacy and lessen the side effects of a spell."

Margo gulps.

"And what spell are we talking about?"

He hesitates for a fraction of a second, but then forges on.

"It is something I have learned in my travels through the Fade, a ritual done to ease a spirit's passing, or its transformation. It draws on the surrounding environment to solidify the spirit's essence. It helps the spirit recall itself before it moves on. It is possible that I might be able to replicate this, but using a physical body instead of the Fade's landscape. But I must warn you, I have never attempted it in the waking realm. I am reasonably sure I can replicate it, but suspect the experience might be… intense. Possibly dangerous."

Sounds like something shamanic to her. Except, of course, the magic around here seems a lot more material and immediately visible than it is in her world. But a ritual? She can work with a ritual.

"Sounds like a plan to me."

This time, he looks genuinely surprised.

"You would trust me to do this?"

She just shrugs.

"Well, since I'm reasonably sure you've already seen me naked, what's a little ritual?"

"It was only in a medical capacity!" he bristles. And colors a bit.

Margo represses a smile. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

"Considering my best options are that or wandering around the camp at random to look for my things that may or may not contain anything useful, I'll take my chances. Seriously, if I were a spy, then how likely is it that I kept a detailed memoir of all my comings and goings conveniently tucked away in some knapsack?"

Solas has recovered from his mild embarrassment and is chuckling again, and yep, the warm fuzzies are turning into a conditioned reflex. Oh fuck, no, she doesn't need this.

"I would wager, rather low, unless you were a very bad spy."

"Lets play it safe, and assume I was at least reasonably competent, then. So, I will see you tomorrow evening. And now, if you will excuse me, I have to take care of Evelyn, because I left her with Varric, and she is either drunk, or horribly embarrassed, or likely both."

Solas nods, but his expression is back to aloof. As she passes him, he calls after her with a rather dry "goodnight."

So, the elf is mercurial, to boot.

Good to know.


	5. Chapter 5: Amrita Blues

She drops off her botanical ransom in the apothecary, and then walks briskly to the tavern.

As it turns out, Evelyn is not at all embarrassed, probably because she is most definitely drunk. When Margo enters, everything is more or less where she left it. Varric is still holding fort, and Evie is next to him. She is a little flushed with the warmth – and, lets face it, the booze – and she is now hemmed in on one side by two more soldiers, one of which looks to Margo's critical eye middle-aged, handsome, and all kind of bad news. That is a wham bam thank you ma'am kind of fellow, and boy does he seem on a mission.

She's too young to be the mother figure, but hell, someone's gotta do it. She marches over, but there is nowhere to sit, so she just sort of leans a hip against the side of the table.

"Prickly! You're back! Where is my beer?"

"I thought we established that you're the one who owes me one."

"Aw, you wound me. Still trying to trick an old dwarf."

Before she can come up with some clever repartee, the door to the tavern opens, and Seeker Pentaghast and what she assumes to be Commander Cullen walk in, both looking like they're feeling terribly out of place. There's the noise of chairs being pushed back, and of backs being straightened. The ambient din goes down a couple of notches. Some of the soldiers at their table scuttle off quickly, and Margo uses the opportunity to snag a seat in front of Evie.

The bad boy type to Evie's right looks up at her, and winks.

Except, of course, the commanding officers make a beeline for their table, and Margo belatedly concludes that they are probably there to collect Lady Trevelyan.

She takes a look at Evie and realizes the girl is terribly flustered by this point, probably because this little escapade was all well and good, until the authority figures showed up.

"Varric Tethras. I should have known we'd find you here. And with the Herald, no less." If lightning bolts could strike on intent, Varric would be toast. Come to think of it, they can, which makes Margo conclude that this trick is not in the Seeker's particular skillset.

Varric just leans back on his bunk, in a casual pose that is clearly meant to antagonize.

"Cassandra Pentaghast. How lovely of you to come socialize with the rest of the common rabble. You warm my poor, scarred heart."

Cassandra – since that's apparently the warrior woman's name – looks like she wants to say something biting, but it doesn't fly off the tongue, and then the moment passes, and she just seems annoyed. There is such naked frustration in her gaze that Margo finds herself looking quickly between the dwarf and the Seeker. Varric, for his part, looks pleased as punch. Margo briefly wonders if someone should do the two a favor and check if the tavern might have rooms available.

Instead, she takes the opportunity to get a better look at Commander Cullen. Once you get past the disconcerting collar, the man is classically attractive, but in a mild kind of way, as if not all the softness of youth was ground out of him quite yet. Add to that the slight wistfulness – though it could just be plain old discomfort – and you get a pretty pleasant impression. Judging purely on appearances, the Commander doesn't strike her as a bad dude. For a second, he reminds her a bit of her little brother Jake, just a tad older and obviously more battle-worn. And then she gets gut-punched by the worst pang of nostalgia she's had since coming to this fucked up world, and, to her horror, she feels the telltale prickle of tears making their way up her sinuses.

She makes herself sneeze, before they can shed, and forces a grin.

"Well, looks like I'm catching a cold. We don't have enough mages to change the climate either, do we?"

This earns her a puzzled look from Cullen, and a steely one from Cassandra.

"No. And in fact, we don't have enough mages, period, and barely enough of anything else. But this does not seem to prevent certain people from wasting their time getting drunk and telling tall tales."

"You wound me, Seeker. I never lie."

Varric looks unrepentant. Cassandra looks like she wants to tackle him.

"And that's my cue to take Lady Trevelyan home."

She gets up, and helps Evie extricate herself from her seat. The bad boy soldier shoots her a dirty look, and she greets this with a raised eyebrow that she hopes conveys in no uncertain terms that "yep, I will cock block you any time of the day, so keep it tucked in."

The girl is, predictably, a bit wobbly. Margo grabs her elbow in a firm grip, and they begin their progression to the door.

"Don't forget you still owe me a beer, Prickly. I'm going to start charging interest, you know?"

"I'll buy you a pitcher next time" she shoots back.

"Promises, promises" the dwarf grumbles, but by that point, they are outside, leaving whatever lectures are forthcoming safely behind.

She relies on Evie to guide her back to the house she occupies, but the girl seems lost, and not a little tipsy.

"Commander Cullen is so handsome, isn't he?" she whispers. Even the whisper is just a tad slurred.

"Sweetheart, how much have you had?" Margo asks, now genuinely worried. Sure, he is handsome. But if they've made it to boy talk already, this bodes poorly for the kid's blood alcohol content. She's young and will probably just sleep it off, but still. How much experience does she have with getting sloshed? She's pretty sure this world doesn't fuss over legal drinking age, but she's not entirely sure Evie had ever gotten drunk before.

"To drink? I am not sure. That nice soldier to my right – Jan? Jon? – just kept bringing these really yummy drinks, with funny names. Like The Antivan Lover, and The Parapet Gambler. Why would someone want to gamble a parapet, anyway?"

Margo just groans.

"I just bet he did" To be filed under 'improve bad boy's stew with a good dose of purgative. Or emetic. And kick Varric's ass for not putting his foot down. "How old are you, kid? Have you had much beer, or wine before?" She's trying to assess the girl's overall tolerance. She's reasonably sure she saw something on alcohol poisoning in Auntie's Compendium, if it came to that…

"I will be twenty two next month" Evie announces proudly. "But Bann Trevelyan says I should avoid becoming inebriated at all costs, because it is dangerous for me."

Margo cuts her a side glance. She'd like to have a stern talk with this Bann Trevelyan about the dangers of over-sheltering. Heavens preserve them all from demons, hellmouths, and helicopter parents.

"And why's that?"

Before she can get an answer, they have another problem. Evie gets a little green around the gills, her big blue eyes going wide with alarm.

"I think I feel a little funny…"

And this is how Margo finds herself holding Lady Evelyn Trevelyan's hair back, as the kid pukes by the forge.

The rest of the walk is predictable. Evie stumbles and, slowly beginning to sober up, feels horribly embarrassed, and Margo finds herself alternating between whispering reassuring platitudes and gently scolding. Mercifully, Haven is small, and they make it back to Evie's house, where Margo forces her to drink a mug of water, and tucks her in bed.

"I'm going to be back tomorrow morning with your medicine, and the notes, and then you and I are going to deliver them to Master Adan, and that'll be all done with."

"I made a fool of myself back there, didn't I?" The kid's lower lip is trembling. "Did I say embarrassing things? I'm sure I said embarrassing things."

"You're fine. You just need sleep."

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No. I'm not mad at you at all." How the hell did she find herself the designated caretaker for Baby Trevelyan is beyond her, but, again, someone's got to do the job.

"Why are they all fussing over you, anyway? I mean, I don't mean that as an offense, I personally really like you, but…They seem somehow vested in you beyond what I would assume is regular nobility etiquette. Pentaghast is clearly pretty far up the food chain, but I don't see anyone fussing…"

Evie pulls the blanket over herself, and puts her left hand on her lap. It's faintly greenish, but only at a certain angle.

"It's because of this. I can.. it can.. close the rifts. Holes. Whatever green things, with the demons. Don't you remember? You were there when that demon... and the really huge breach… And I tried, but it didn't work, and now there are all those little rifts everywhere, and the one big one – and I don't remember how it even happened to me either! Except the Divine, she…she… So I thought you'd at least understand, because you don't remember too, and I thought that maybe…Maybe you're like, a bit like me, or something…"

And then the kid bursts into loud, heartbroken sobs, with those big fat tears rolling down her cheeks, and Margo finds herself hugging her tight, and stroking her hair, and telling her that it'll all be Ok, and that she'll be there for her, and that they'll get through this shit show together. And she can't help feel the bitterness of the lies as they roll off her tongue, because come on, if there ever was a more unequipped person to play guardian angel to the potential savior of the world, she'd be hard-pressed to find one.

By the time she makes it back to the Apothecary, it's snowing, and she's exhausted. She climbs to the attic and collapses on her hay pellet, but can't fall asleep properly. She keeps drifting off, but each time dreams of falling down a dark pit, a malevolent presence rushing by her, and a body no longer her own being morphed into something that will never again have room for her. And then she's a spirit adrift, with nowhere to go, untethered and hurling through the great hollow emptiness of space…

At the rooster's first crow, which she vaguely recalls usually happens around four in the morning, Margo gives up on this whole sleeping enterprise, and gets up. She goes down to brew herself some tea. Adan's nowhere in sight, so she concludes he doesn't stay in the apothecary overnight. She makes herself at home, sticking her nose into every jar until she finds something that smells vaguely tea-like. It looks to be flowers, so at least she's unlikely to poison herself – not like with, say, some random roots. The jar, of course, is not labeled. She fishes out a single dry flower, and examines it more closely, then pops it into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. It's a little sweet, and a little minty, with a hint of hops.

Auntie's Compendium has pictures of live flora, but not dry materials. Still, the flower is distinct enough for her to identify with ease. Amrita Vein. She wonders at the coincidence of the plant's name, the Sanskrit cognate of nectar, and, incidentally, immortality. It seems both vaguely blasphemous and satisfying to boil her tea with the alien plant, and then she settles into a chair, and leafs through Auntie's book, sipping the concoction. It's not half bad. Like fireweed tea, but sweeter. Sure enough, there is Amrita's story in there. A hedge witch who failed to die after being abandoned by Templars in the desert.

Typical.

She leafs to the entry for Elfroot, and Auntie Ines – nothing if not thorough - included a list of formulas, in addition to the lore she had collected about the plant. The hard-earned eflroot in the burlap sack looks to her like the Bitter variety. There's also apparently something called Royal Elfroot, probably on account of its purplish leaves.

Because nothing says Royal like a purple trim.

She props the book open, and leaves it on the workstation for consultation.

After that, it's smooth sailing. She goes rummaging for Dawn Lotus – which, in her humble opinion, looks like a glorified reed - and locates a good-sized sack of it with a triumphant "Aha!" Master Adan really needs to invest in some labels.

The next two hours are spent cleaning the Elfroot, and then drying it next to the fire. She should have done it the night before, after collecting it, but she'd had a rather busy day, so she cuts herself some slack. The formulary does not specify whether it needs to be dried, but she knows from experience that it is much easier to grind up a dry plant. The work is meditative, and Margo finds herself lost in thoughts. Flashes of childhood float up in her mind like soap bubbles. The pounding motion that crushes the leaves is familiar – though this familiarity is not of this body, but of her mind. Or spirit, as Solas calls it.

It is the same motion that her baba taught her, and she has a vivid memory of the old woman, her dark hands, veined and gnarled with age, smelling of mint and lemon balm. They work a pestle in circular motions. Baba smells like home, like nothing else ever has, or will. Everything about baba is dark and high-contrast – the kerchief with the oversized flowers that holds her long black hair up, barely salted with white even at eighty. The strong jaw line, the nose, hooked, like a bird's, the deep-set slate grey eyes, the skin around them with its bursts of crowfeet. Don't fret, my soul. She hears the old woman's voice, soothing, cracked, and just a little humorous. There is nothing that your baba doesn't have a little herb for. She is twelve or thirteen, and nursing her very first heartbreak. It feels bigger than the whole world. You can never be lonely when you make friends with the little herbs.

Margo snaps to, because at this point, she is crying, and there is no point in faking bravado. So she lets the tears fall as they will - trying to not water the herb mixture too much – because if she's going to have a melt-down, she might as well do it in the privacy of the apothecary. But mourning her lost world won't bring it back, or bring her back into it, and besides, there is no more baba to run to. That time is gone for good.

Eventually, the tears stop, and somehow, she feels marginally better.

The rest of the work is in careful measuring and weighing, and she finds a nice little scale, with its collection of metal weights tucked neatly into matching sockets in a velvet case.

By the time she goes to fetch more snow for melting, the sky is taking on the piercing lapis hue of pre-dawn. She packs some clean snow into a ball, and carries that back, then stuffs it into the large cast iron pot over the fire and waits for it to boil.

The sun is rising, and the sky a bright custard yellow when Master Adan rolls into the shop. She has a nice little collection of healing potions by then, all lined up and labeled – though trying to write with a bird feather results in seriously ugly script. The liquid tastes bitter as hell, but it's a good bitter – the kind of bitter that tells you "yes, I am very good for you, have some more." She's downed half a vile – because what good scientist doesn't experiment on herself – and she feels good. Really good, in fact. Her ribs no longer ache, and she's a lot less exhausted, despite the lack of sleep.

Adan eyes the vials.

" What's this?"

She hands him one of the unstoppered ones.

"Would you check? I think I did it right, but want your expert opinion."

He sniffs at the vile suspiciously, then takes a small sip, rolling the liquid on his tongue.

"It's… a little stronger than I make them. But…" He takes another sip. She notices that the dark circles under his eyes pale a bit. Someone was up too late, she thinks to herself. Probably drinking hard, too.

"Not bad for a fledgling. We'll make an alchemist of you yet."

She can't help it. She beams at him with pleasure, color coming into her cheeks.

They spend most of the early morning finishing up her elfroot supply, but she saves some for a restoration potion, and then some more for the formula Solas gave her. She quizzes Adan about that one, but he just shrugs, with a noncommittal "No idea. Feel free to try, just don't blow up the place."

They chat about his work with Master Taigan – how he began apprenticing with him when he was eleven, working his way up from collection to processing to making formulas - and she can't help but notice that he seems much happier now that he's got a helper. He tells her silly stories about his early experiments with explosives, each one ending with a variant of "And then Master Taigan gave me a sound thrashing."

From his stories, she gleans the names and geography of this world. Thedas is subdivided into something like nation states, inhabited by different people, and sometimes different species. There are linguistic differences, presumably, but she can't quite figure out if it's languages or dialects. She's still a bit shaky on the Qunari, but they apparently have something called Getlock – for which Master Adan has a very serious hard-on – and it sounds a whole lot like gunpowder.

By mid-morning they're done processing the elfroot, and Adan hands her a handful of coppers in a small little woven purse. She tucks her first earnings Thedas-side into her pocket, and decides to check on Evie, bring her the medicine, and haul her over to the apothecary to deliver Master Taigan's notes. And then maybe track Varric down for lunch and buy him his damn beer, now that she actually can.

Except, Evie is nowhere to be found. She wanders around camp, until she comes up on a small crowd by the tents. There is a sparring ground, and a bunch of men and women are training.

She spots Cassandra whacking at a wooden dummy like it stole her dinner.

The small crowd, though, isn't interested in the spectacle of the Seeker thrashing the humanoid log. Instead, they are watching Evie and a young female knight circle each other. She's not sure why this particular thing has attracted everyone's attention – by all accounts, the sight of Seeker Pentaghast smiting the dummy is way more entertaining – but she feels a kind of nervousness for what will likely happen. And indeed, Evie, who is armed with a sword and a shield she seems barely able to lift, let alone wield, is looking utterly miserable.

Not that Margo knows a thing about fighting – beyond minimal self-defense, and even that, dubious – but even she can tell this won't go well. And the crowd, sorry bastards that they are, smell the blood and are circling.

It's over in thirty seconds. The lady knight charges, and disarms Evie in two blows. The kid cowers behind her shield, holding it up with both hands. There are jeers from the onlookers, and Margo "accidentally" bumps into a burly fellow who's hooting particularly loudly. He gives her a cross look, which she meets with an innocent smile.

"Enough!"

And there's Commander Cullen, striding over with grim determination. Seeker Pentaghast abandons her project of abusing the dummy, and makes her way towards the sparring grounds as well.

"With all due respect, Commander, she is not ready for the field. She won't last a day. I won't use my men as fodder just to compensate for her incompetence. She needs more training."

"Not in front of the soldiers" Cullen grinds out, and then gives Evie an awkward nod, and leads his subordinate away by the elbow. Cassandra intercepts them, and they go off to discuss matters of state.

Margo collects the crestfallen Evie from the sparring rink, and takes the giant shield from her. "Don't let them see you cry" she whispers. Evie furtively rubs her eyes with her sleeve, but at least she's not bawling. Kid one, crowd zero.

As they begin to walk back towards the alchemy shop, Margo spots a familiar – and unwelcome – figure looming at the edge of the field like an oversized malevolent crow.

The Spymaster pins her with a calculating kind of stare – the kind that's trying to decide if it wants to peck out your spleen or your liver first – and beckons with a hand.

"A word?"

Margo nods, and then extracts the bundle of notes from her pack, and hands them to Evie.

"Could you do me a favor and take these to Master Adan? He'll have some tonics for you to take home, too."

"You're not coming?" the kid asks, disappointment painted plainly on her face.

"Sure I am. I'll be right up."

At least, she hopes she will be. Either that, or she'll be right down, straight to Comrade Nightingale's dungeon.

When she comes over, the Spymaster turns around and begins to walk up the hill.

"Walk with me, agent."

Margo doesn't see many plausible alternatives to this proposition, so she complies. They make their way towards the temple.

"I could not help but notice that you have taken an interest in Lady Trevelyan. How very … thoughtful of you. How is your memory?"

"I'm working on it" she offers.

"I am told you are making yourself very useful to Master Adan. It must be fascinating, working with all these potent substances."

"Whatever helps me get my memories back faster."

"I hear that this morning's batch of healing potions is working especially well. Your doing, I take it?"

Margo nods, but this time, remains silent, lest there are more questions that start with a variation of "I am told" or "I hear."

"A useful skill, herbalism. Wherever did you pick it up. I do not recall it being in Charter's recruiting dossier on you."

So, there is a dossier on her? She wonders where it might be kept. Probably in a hell realm, protected by Cerberus and a thousand wrathful deities, if the Spymaster has her way.

They stop, some distance from the temple, but with a good view of its façade. In the morning light, it is truly majestic.

"Beautiful, is it not? There is the Chantry, of course, but the site itself is much older. In the morning the clerics would sing the Chant, and the sound would travel all the way down to the valley."

At this point Margo's pretty sure that the abrupt changes of subject – and tone - are a destabilizing tactic. Comrade Nightingale would certainly be pleased to know that it's working as intended.

"You know, they say our young Lady Trevelyan is the Herald of Andraste herself. Sent to us in our time of need to rectify the wrongs of the world. Are you devout, agent?"

Margo considers how to answer. She has always been on the agnostic side of any kind of religious belief, with the general attitude that unless it comes over and knocks her on her head, then its existence remains dubious until proven otherwise.

And then it came, and knocked her on her head. And there are apparently multiple universes, magic, demons, and quite possibly other mythological shenanigans. She wonders if there are dragons. And from dragons…well, it's not a far step, hop, and jump to total suspended disbelief.

But Comrade Nightingale probably doesn't want to hear her ecclesiastical musings.

"I am… undecided" she volunteers.

"Indeed you are" the Spymaster exclaims, with creepy cheer. "And how could you not be, since you have lost your memory."

Of, fuck this shit very much, she can't walk on eggshells forever. She'll probably get killed either way, unless the Spymaster managers to needle her to death before that.

"Look, I know that you have no reason to trust me, but believe at least this. I am doing everything I can to find the information you need."

Leliana gives her an inscrutable look.

"That may be so. And in fact, I am inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume, for a moment, that you have, indeed, lost your memory. And let us also assume for a moment that your friendship with Lady Trevelyan is borne of genuine sentiment. At the very least, traitor or not, you must understand her importance."

Margo waits for the other shoe to drop.

"What do you make of her performance on the training grounds this morning?"

Ah. That must be the other shoe. Although she isn't sure what the local Gestapo's very own Herr – well, Ok, Frau - Göring here is angling for. But no point in denying the obvious, and aggravate the Spymaster.

"I think she's not very skilled at combat. But she is young, she will learn."

"Ah, but that is precisely the issue. She is not young for the skills she clearly does not possess. She should be accomplished with her chosen weapon by now, as all heirs to noble families are. And it remains a question why she is not. In fact, we know very little about her upbringing – her family is remarkably secretive on this subject - and I, for one, do not like secrets." She gives her a pointed look. "But more to the matter at hand, we don't have the luxury of time for her to train before we must make use of her. The mages and Templars are annihilating each other, there are Qunari on the coast. Orlais and Ferelden are jostling for power. The place of the Divine stands vacant. And then, there is the obvious problem."

The woman gestures towards the sky behind them.

Margo tries to decide what is causing the Spymaster's sudden loquaciousness. If the woman thinks that this little exposé on Thedas geopolitics is going to lower her defenses, she's got a bridge to sell her.

"So you see our predicament. The Inquisition cannot shelter her forever, and she needs to be out in the field, minimally, closing rifts. Thus building up people's faith in her status as Herald of Andraste to rally the population behind her. We are hemorrhaging troops, and we don't have enough people with serious field experience to act as body guards and build a self-sufficient operative unit. Which brings me to … you. And the problem of your lost patrol."

Margo misses half of this, because she is still stuck at 'the Inquisition.' Inquisitions, in her experience, are bad news. Aside from the fact that no one ever expects them, they have a tendency to get very zealous about the whole torture and burn approach to ideological dissenters.

She updates her label for the Spymaster to Torquemada.

"I have good reason to think that there is an advantage to be gained on the Sword Coast, someone who might be useful for extending Lady Trevelyan's life expectancy, despite her incompetence, and who might be persuaded to join our cause. If your memory loss is a farce, and you are an agent of the Qun - as I suspect - then it is possible that you will see this as playing in the hands of your masters, and will have no problem with my proposition. If it is not – whether because your memory troubles are the product of an accident or induced – then you will agree for sentimental reasons, to protect our young friend."

The Spymaster turns away from the Chantry to survey the valley. Thin plumes of smoke are rising above the houses. From here, Margo can hear the metal clanking drifting up from the sparring grounds.

"Allow me to put it very simply. Despite Master Adan's – and now your - alchemical efforts, we are desperate for healers. The apostate is helpful, but one mage gets us only so far. We must recruit aggressively, and there is a Chantry mother and healer from the Hinterlands we need to bring into the fold. I doubt she will agree to take sides, but might be swayed by the idea that Andraste herself has sent the embodiment of her benevolence. I can spare Cassandra and the mage for a week – and the dwarf, I assume, will tag along - but this will mean more losses among our wounded. It will also mean that we'll incur more casualties from this mission, and by that point we should expect to be stretched very thin indeed. After that, we need to expand our ranks, and fast. Hence, I need your memories now. Not it three days. This is the only logistically sound approach. I am sorry."

Oh, that's the shoe. Well, fuck.

"Can you give me until tomorrow morning?"

The Spymaster cuts her a dry glance.

"So you can try to run? Do not waste your effort and my resources."

Margo swallows. Her stomach feels like it's trying to flee through her heels, but she forces her mouth to work through the icy terror.

"No. I won't run. If I have nothing for you by tomorrow morning, I will come willingly, and you can do as you please. But let me at least try to do this on my own terms."

The Spymaster crosses her arms.

"I do not see how this delay would benefit the Inquisition."

Margo pauses, formulating.

"Think of it this way. If I am in fact a loyal agent to your cause, and my story checks out, then you gain your information and retain an agent. If not, then you might gain your information – or might not – and you definitely lose an agent. You yourself are saying that you are already short on people."

At this, the Spymaster's expression morphs into a cold smile, and for a second, she reminds Margo of a grinning skull.

"You make a valid argument. These are acceptable terms. Tomorrow at first light."

With this, Torquemada walks away, the snow creaking under her boots. And Margo realizes belatedly that the Spymaster maneuvered her to exactly where she wanted her.


	6. Chapter 6: In Memoriam

She walks, dazed, back to the apothecary. The worst part of it all is that Torquemada, for all her pretty fucking callous attitude to her staff, is not wrong. Margo can see her reasoning. This is a world in deep crisis. You have the – ecological? cosmic? – clusterfuck that is the hellmouth, and then you have the various powers, great and small, trying to exploit said clusterfuck to further some parochial and short sighted interest. Instead of all working together to try and not get annihilated by the fauna that gets vomited out of yonder hell portal.

If this Inquisition – terrible choice of name notwithstanding – is the only organization that has an even remote shot at ameliorating some of this, then yes. Spymaster Leliana is in her right. This is all bigger than their individual interests, or lives, and from that angle, she supposes that all of them are disposable.

Safe, perhaps, for Evie.

So when it's all said and done, there's really not much room for hand-wringing, and Margo has a solid enough sense of historicity to accept the whole "one small cog in the machine" theory of individual relevance. But then again, squeaky wheel gets the grease, so no sense in rolling over either.

At the apothecary's entrance, she's greeted by a visibly happier Evie, who rattles off something about Master Adan being really pleased about the notes, and giving her some elfroot potion to deliver to the various make-shift infirmaries. And before Margo can process all that, Evie throws her arms around her neck and gives her a loud peck on the cheek.

And then blushes bright red, and proceeds to apologize profusely.

"I mean… I don't mean… It's just that you gave me the notes to give Master Adan, and you didn't have to, and then you didn't let me stay all alone after I couldn't fight, and then you helped me home even though I was horribly drunk and embarrassing. Thank you for being such an amazing friend!"

Margo blinks once, and then can't help but smile.

"You're welcome, kid. Next time you're drinking with Varric, watch out for that Jan guy. Or anyone else who seems to be buying you lots of sweet drinks. And if you have to drink, stick to beer."

"Yup! I got it. Stick to beer, don't accept fancy drinks from random men, especially if they have intriguing names like The Pirate Princess' Chest."

"Right on."

Oy. Good thing the biochemistry hasn't gotten sufficiently elaborate for Rufinol, but she's pretty sure that the locals are using what they have on hands in clever ways anyway. She makes a mental note to look for a formulary on poisons and antidotes.

If she is alive by tomorrow afternoon, that'll be her new pet project.

She lets the girl run along, and returns to the Apothecary. Master Adan, pleased with the day's development so far, promises her that he's going to teach her more complex preparations in a few days. "You'll be making Lyrium potions in no time, you mark my word." And whatever Lyrium is, Margo is intrigued enough by this prospect that the idea of dying in the next day-night cycle (however long they are here) really does not appeal.

She buckles down for the afternoon, and begins to try her hand at the restoration draughts. It's slow, finicky, and for someone who isn't her, probably boring work – you have to reduce the elfroot down to a black sticky paste, and then dry that out, grind it, and boil it some more, with the rest of the ingredients. It's not an uncommon technique, and she has encountered the practice in several medical traditions back home, but the elfroot she gathered – whether because such is this particular species, or because of its unlikely growing conditions – isn't resinous enough.

She makes do with what she has, and on the third try, she has a restoration potion that at least looks like the right thing. The dark tawny liquid catches the light as she swirls it in a glass beacon. She hands it to Adan for testing.

He takes a cautious sip.

"Hmm. It's close. But not quite right either. Did you add a reagent?"

"I did. What's missing?"

He tastes the potion again.

"I would say it's missing astringency. It should have a binding finish, like… hmmm, Ghoul's Beard when it gets frostbitten."

She doesn't know what a Ghouls' Beard is, let alone what it might taste after frostbite, but she understands astringency.

"Got it, like an unripe banana."

"A what?"

"Never mind me. Can you check over my formula? And technique?"

Adan grumbles, but obliges. He looks over her formulary as she prepares the base again. He's frowning, flipping the pages back and forth.

"Where are your annotations?" he asks.

Margo just looks at him in puzzlement.

"Should there be specific annotations?"

He gives her a look like she just fell out of the hellmouth, while playing the accordion. Which, in a way, more or less describes the absurdity of the whole thing.

"Who did you train with?"

"My grandmother" she blurts out, before she can check herself. "But I'm also largely self-taught."

"Hedge witches…" Adan grumbles. "No wonder you're struggling. You have natural talent, and I can see you have a good memory. And somehow, you seem to have the technical training down better than any novice I've seen. But without a teacher's explanations, you might as well be brewing tisanes."

Margo vaguely realizes that she should be feeling chastised by all this, but instead she is practically bouncing up and down with excitement. It's a lineage system! With a robust oral tradition! This is why the formularies are so bare bones. And in fact, it is probably why Auntie Ines is overrepresented – she's guessing she was an iconoclast, trying to systematize the whole knowledge into a single corpus of work. But she still must have kept local variations out of the compendium, maybe because she was trying to distill a kind of average formula out of many local variants. Or maybe simply out of respect for guild secrets. Yes. Then the compendium would be useful for teaching, but one would still need a mentor to offer commentaries and explanations. To hone the formulas. Knowledge systematized, oral tradition preserved – it's a win-win. Atta Auntie.

She notices Adan is staring at her in befuddlement.

"You know you're a strange lass, right?"

"Yup. So. What am I missing?"

It turns out that you have to add grated Deep Mushroom (also known as totally different species of fungus that all happen to grow underground, but otherwise don't have much in common) to the concoction right before it boils. And so, she soon has a sample that passes Adan's approval, and she is ready to tackle Solas's formula.

Except, of course, by this point she has barely any elfroot left, and it's getting too late to go gather more and still have time to brew. The only option left is to follow the formula exactly as it is noted, and hope for the best.

In an hour, she's done. She stretches her back, muscles stiff from leaning over the workstation for too long. The potion is cooling, and she takes a tiny sip of it to check it for taste. The spice is there. But the sweetness is faint. Nowhere near cloying.

She doesn't suppose that dumping a bunch of molasses in there is going to solve the pharmacological divergence, so Margo corks the bottle, finds a cloth to wrap around it so that the draught doesn't cool too fast in the cold, and carefully deposits it into her bag.

When she leaves the apothecary, it is dark again, and she's wondering where the day has gone. She considers swinging by the tavern, but decides against it. If she knows anything, it's that mixing alcohol with pharmaceuticals is a terrible idea. Although this also means that she hasn't eaten in a while, but considering how little draught she ended up managing to produce, drinking it on an empty stomach isn't a bad idea.

Perhaps she should go check on Evie, and make sure she didn't get into any new and interesting trouble. Or try to see if Master Harritt might make her a little portable rake for digging plants out of the permafrost. Or she could go watch Cassandra terrorize the dummy, because nothing is more entertaining than seeing Cassie the Warrior Princess take out her aggression on a log in a hat.

Except, of course, she's stalling because now that it's coming right down to it, she is terrified out of her wits. For all her tough talk about the innocence of rituals, she has few doubts that in a world where magic is so – immediate – there is nothing benign about ritualistic behavior.

Alright. Salt circles. Candles. Incense. Silly wiccans. Just like home. What could possible go wrong?

She can do this.

She knocks on Solas's door, and then for a second wonders if he will answer. At least, she hopes it's his door. She has seen him occasionally stand outside this house down the street from her apothecary, and why would he be loitering about if this weren't where he was staying?

The door swings open, and, indeed, it's the man … elf…himself.

" – You have come. Please."

He gestures for her to enter.

She knocks the snow off her boots at the threshold, trying to avoid dragging the mush into his house. She looks around. The space is no frills, going on ascetic. The furniture is simple. A bed, a dresser, a few chairs. There are books scattered about, but they are the only decoration.

" – You travel light, don't you?" she jokes, trying to decide where she should sit. Or stand. Or… whatever. In the absence of a conveniently drawn goat-headed pentagram with a helpful "Insert sacrificial maiden here, facing this way," she feels a little lost. Not that she's a maiden. Or that this is meant to be a sacrifice. Right?

" – Come, sit." He paces towards a chair, then seems to change his mind, and pulls up another. Hesitates, somehow torn between chair one and chair two. If there are subtle differences between the two seating options, Margo hasn't noticed them.

And then she realizes he's nervous too, and she's not sure if that should make her feel better, or worse.

Well, no time like the present.

"How does it work?"

He clears his throat.

"It is quite simple. I do the same for you as I would do for a spirit in the Fade, when it is their time to pass, or when they change into something other than themselves. Spirits are maintained by the emotions emplaced in their environment. When a spirit moves on, it is possible to feed magic into the patterns that have given it form."

She nods slowly. Not that she's exactly following all this – the biggest stumbling being "Fade," and spirits as some kind of autonomous entity.

"And how would this apply to working with a body?"

"We presume the same thing. The body has stored some memories that are, for whatever reason, inaccessible to your spirit. The spell should activate and maintain the body's memory for long enough to recover the necessary information."

She looks at him, and he seems definitely excited – like he's itching to try this and verify if it works quite as neatly in practice as it does in theory.

Of course, he's not taking a big variable into consideration. He would find out soon enough on his own, but… it seems unethical not to warn him.

"Solas? There is something about me that you should know."

"Oh?" He leans against the doorframe, in a relaxed pose that also manages to be a little cheeky. "You mean something beyond what I have already seen?"

Is the egghead flirting with her?

"Cute. And yes." He can flirt all he wants now, it's not going to be all daisies and sunshine when he realizes that she's a body snatcher.

"Very well. So it is not about your body. Or at least not about its exterior, aesthetically pleasing as it is, since I am already somewhat familiar with it. Do you wish to tell me now, or shall I see for myself?"

Aesthetically pleasing? Ah yes, definitely flirting. But also, nervous. Maybe this is how he handles that.

Except, of course, the warm and fuzzies make a roaring come back. She reminds herself that it isn't even her body.

Which brings her to his question.

"Both. I am going to offer you the best explanation I can, and then I want you to check for yourself, because in my experience empirical understanding is worth a thousand words. And the reason I want you to do that is because I think it will have to change the way you approach your spell."

"Very well." Solas nods, stops propping up the wall, and comes to sit on the chair in front of her, one leg over the other, chin on his fist. Margo decides he just needs a pair of dark-rimmed glasses to complete the ensemble. He's already rocking the turtleneck. Your iconic Leftist intellectual. Viva la Revolution.

She mulls it over. What does she say? It's easy, right? She had a near death experience and got translocated into a different body. Except that translocated seems like a huge euphemism. Trans-realmed? Trans-universed?

"I'm not exactly who I seem to be" she finally manages, and yes, it sounds pretty damn weak.

"Ah."

He somehow doesn't seem surprised. Or not as surprised as he should be.

"You are one of the Spymaster's agents. I suspect this comes as a hazard of your profession."

She should probably elaborate. Tell him the whole story. Except, she chickens out.

"Just look for yourself."

He hesitates, his gaze focused on something far off in the distance that she can't see. Finally, he seems to make a decision.

"Very well. Here. As with sleep, your body will go into a kind of paralysis. It would be best if you lie down. And before we begin, you must drink the draught."

He gestures to the bed.

She takes off her jacket, and hangs it on the back of her chair, then fishes through her knapsack, and extracts the vial. The cork is wedged too deeply, sucked in by the change in temperature, and it takes her a few tries to unstopper the bottle.

"Well. To the benefit of all beings." The Buddhist blessing seems appropriate, somehow.

She downs it in a single gulp. It goes down smoothly, and sure enough, there is a sweet sort of spice that coats her tongue – a finish that wasn't there before. It's not cloying, though. She should have waited for the stuff to extract for longer.

She lies down on the bed, that might as well be a plank for all the cushioning it lends. How does he sleep on that thing? Solas pulls up his chair, and leans over her, his hands passing over her body without touching it. And at this point, she has such a vivid recollection of the one time she went for an energy healing sessions – on a dare from Jake, of course - that she has to suppress a grin.

She shoots a quick glance at the elf. He looks so earnestly focused, that she can't help it.

"This is where you tell me that my aura has obstructions."

A look of puzzlement comes over his features.

"Your what has obstructions?"

At first, it's just a quiet sort of harrumph. But because Solas is now sporting the unmistakable look of peeved annoyance, she burst into giggles. The more she tries to suppress them, the more insistent the giggles get, and soon enough she's crawled up in a fetal position, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tries to choke the hysterical laughter down.

"You are not taking this seriously enough."

And because she expects more outraged peevishness, she's jolted out of her hysterical sniggering by the soft sadness in his voice.

She looks him square in the eyes, and thinks to herself that it would be easy – and a terrible idea – to get lost in their shifting colors.

"I'm sorry. I'm just… nervous."

He nods. And then there's a distinct change in the texture of his non-touch, and she feels a jolt, hot and cold at once, that courses from his hands and into her body. She forces herself to keep still, no longer in the mood for hilarity.

Solas draws back with a hiss.

She lifts up on one elbow to get a better look at his expression, and what she sees there unnerves her. There's… she's not sure what it is. Surprise. Fear, maybe. And a heartbroken kind of recognition that she can't even begin to identify.

"What are you?"

Margo reaches over, and grabs his hand, because somehow this seems like the most logical thing to do at the moment. His skin is cool and dry, fingers long and delicate, like a musician's.

"I'm... Not from around here."

He bolts to his feet, takes a few paces, and then turns around.

"Yes, I can see that your spirit is not of this body. But how…"

And that, of course, is the heart of it.

"I think you can get the whole story. If you're willing to keep going."

He hesitates for a few moments, and then settles back into his chair. She reclines back on the bed, more tentative now, but the ball is in his court and really, it's his decision. That her life probably depends on it doesn't mean she can force him.

"Of course." A quiet whisper. "We should begin."

She nods once.

His hands are back, hovering over her. And then he shakes his head, and lowers them down, framing her face. She feels his fingertips glide over her forehead.

"This body's memory is not your own. If I allow it to manifest, I believe your spirit will be forced to incorporate it into itself. The draught should allow you to be a spectator, keeping you – and I – at a safe distance. Is this what you wish?"

She nods, because somehow she doesn't have the voice to say it.

Another jolt of magic, a brief sense of vertigo, and then she sees a little girl – except, it's not an elven girl, but a human one, with dark hair and olive skin, just like her baba's – skipping rope in a weedy yard. Chickens run underfoot.

She watches the girl from about ten feet away. There is a presence next to her. She doesn't need to look to know it's Solas, Virgil to her Dante.

"You?" The question comes from everywhere and nowhere at once.

But before she can figure out how to articulate an answer, the image hitches and morphs, like a visual glitch, and it is an elven girl with flaxen hair playing a game she doesn't understand on the cobbled pavement of a medieval city. She is younger – in human years five or six at most. Margo catches a whiff of frying oils, and sewage.

The dark-haired girl skipping rope is gone, the memory scattered.

What comes next rushes along in a flurry of images. The elven girl is outside, wandering the woods. It's dark, and she's afraid, but she is more terrified by what she has left behind – there, in the tenseness of her shoulders and the bruises on her face – than by what's ahead. A female elf comes to meet her underneath the tree cover, bow in hand. Her skin is covered in elaborate tattoos.

The memory fades, and she feels Solas's hands trail down from her head to her neck, and then to her shoulders.

"There is little here" she thinks she hears him say, but before she can respond, another flood of images take over. She is still apart from them, a voyeur peeking in, and she feels Solas's presence double – there, in the small modest room by the bed, and here, in the maze of memories not her own.

She – and this time, it is her, once again, at maybe thirteen or fourteen – is painting the ornate window trim of a wooden house, alongside another figure, tall and gaunt, like a scarecrow. Except this isn't a menacing presence, and she could recognize its ghost anywhere. This is baba. Her muscles ache with the strain of repeated motion, but the trim is turning azure, and baba chuckles quietly next to her. Ay kak ladno, my love, now these silly neighbors can talk. A real gingerbread house for the village witch, hmm?

And then baba is gone, and so is the memory, eaten by the magic spell, and traded for another's past. There is an elven girl - maybe thirteen or fourteen – learning dagger work. She is fast – strike, parry, strike, twirl. She dances with another elven man – her trainer, perhaps – and there, in the background, an old elven woman with olive skin, silver hair glinting with a metal sheen, and dark grey eyes nods approvingly. On, ma vehnan, you will be a fine warrior in your time.

As they move over her body, Solas's hands bring more memories of her host – and reduce her own to nothing but ash on the wind – and she wants to cry at their loss, but it seems like it is the only possible price to pay for the knowledge of this other being, gone now, safe for its fragments. She feels his hands glide over her chest and ribs, and she learns of the elven girl's refusal of the Vallaslin, as she walks away, her heart pounding hard, and into the service of a woman called Charter. There is a reason behind it – a boy who hopes to be a hunter, but cannot, and the rebellion at the cruelty of tradition. It's more complicated, of course, something about always feeling like she doesn't quite fit into the grand scheme of things, a dislocation felt in her very bones.

She loses her memory of her first kiss to it, a sweet lad who pilfered tea roses from the neighbor's yard for her. There, and then gone.

She comes out of the magic-induced reverie with a start, and finds the elf staring at her, an expression that can only be qualified as tortured on his face.

Margo sits up. The hut is dark, safe for one candle burning at her bedside. She can't recall Solas lighting it.

"This… Do not ask this of me."

She stares at him in puzzlement. Is the process taking too much of his magic? He looks slumped over, on the verge of exhaustion, and she wonders whether they should stop, except that nothing so far has lent anything useful, and if they stop now, it means the memories of herself she is losing would have been for naught.

"Why?"

That seems like a reasonable question.

He gets up, and starts pacing again. It seems that his way of dealing with emotional strain is extraneous movement.

"Because you are losing parts of yourself."

It is a different kind of anger than she's seen on him before. Not the dramatic flare of frustration, this is something deeper and more primordial to who he is. So it's not a 'technical' difficulty, but an ethical quandary, then. She tries to decide how to respond. From what she can gather, this is not a man she needs to intellectually coddle. She thinks he can take an honest answer. And if not…

"Everything has a price. I'm choosing to pay it willingly."

"You cannot know what you are asking."

She gives him a narrowed eye look.

"Do not presume to know how I choose to balance the scales."

That gets at him. He stalks over, and plants himself over her, looming, the anger still boiling hot, right beneath the still surface.

"Very well then. What shall we do next? Shall we start back up with your feet?"

"Might as well."

"I must work fast. The potion is waning, and once it is gone, the effects it was suppressing will be amplified."

Ah. Withdrawal. Wonderful.

He doesn't give her a chance to adjust. He puts his hands on her ankles, and the magic surges forward, practically knocking her into the dream state. His presence is still there at her side, but it feels faint. Barely a whisper.

There are more images, as his hands travel up. Years spent working for Charter, until Charter is recruited by Leliana. Learning stealth. More dagger work. Figuring out how to read body language to get the most information she can glean. Bloody, stabby things in the dark of night. She loses more things to this. Her last memory of her parents – a breakfast, Jake still a toddler - before the accident took them. The graduation ceremony when she is handed her PhD diploma, her old supervisor misty-eyed with pride at her accomplishment. "Not bad, for a Gipsy urchin." It's an old joke between them, and he gives her his seminal book on the history of the Roma, autographed.

And still, this isn't enough, but his presence alongside her is barely there now, a ghost of a ghost, and then, suddenly, gone.

She falls deep into the memories, no longer a spectator but a participant.

The flow of his magic stops abruptly, and she opens her eyes – though she isn't sure they were closed – and looks at him.

"There must be more. I still have nothing on what Leliana wants."

His expression hardens.

"And if there is nothing left? This body's former occupant is all but gone, and what remains are traces. Haphazard."

She feels her jaw clench.

"Then we get whatever we can."

"And you lose more of yourself?"

"You're seeing what's being erased, yes?"

He nods curtly.

"Then it's not all lost. You'll tell me later what I forgot."

The elf exhales through his teeth, a sharp, sibilant sound. And while she's tempted to start intellectualizing this, she doesn't, because then she'll put a stop to the whole thing, and this entire fucking exercise will have been moot.

"I cannot keep us at bay from the memories anymore. This will only get more difficult."

She looks at him again, and she knows he's hoping she would tell him to stop, except that he doesn't exactly want to. Not quite. Because, by now, Lady Curiosity's got him.

"Alright. Let's get this show on the road and be done with it. What's left? Hip area?"

He nods.

"Do it."

His hands settle on top of her hip bones, directly on her skin. She thinks she's ready for it, except this time, there is no more separation. The potion has lost its potency, and the withdrawal sucks her under.

And of course, they find what they were looking for, as it were, but later, and many times after that, she will wonder at what price.

It starts innocently enough.

She – she, Margo Duvalle (her father's last name, not the names of the matriline that make up the root system of her sense of self) – is walking through a field of flowers. It's summer, and she's wearing a short cotton dress. The grass brushes against her legs, and it tickles. Baba's shaggy little shepherd dog is running alongside her, lunging at the butterflies that alight on the big blue flowers of a globe thistle.

Gone.

She –Maile – is walking through tall grass, its blades heavy with water. She is climbing a steep hill, and on top there is nothing but rain, and pines, and an old abandoned shack, its wooden planks grey and weatherworn. She finds herself pacing, waiting, impatient. When the footsteps come, she whirls around, and he is there.

He is who she had been waiting for – a man in robes that look like armor. He is tanned, and smooth as a river pebble. His gait is predatory and quick, and he glides up to her, feline grace stalking a prey. She feels heat blossom in her lower belly, and before long, they are unfastening each other's garments, not nearly quickly enough.

Margo's hips buckle. She arches her back, helpless to stop the reaction. She tries to control her body, but it's no use. She is locked in its response, like in the horror of sleep paralysis, but perversely motile. And a second later, the magic reverbs through the elf. She sees his pupils dilate. A gasp – soft as a feather – escapes his lips, before he has a chance to press them together into a grim line. And then the memory rolls over them like the ocean tide it is, her body's stored recollections no longer buffeted by the alchemical potency of her draught. Her lover presses her against the wall, and she wraps her thighs around his hips. He lifts her, hands on her ass, and a second later they are joined. She grabs an overhead beam to give herself more leverage and echoes his movements, an urgent heat spreading through her. They match each other, the dance familiar, and longed for.

Wake-side, she can feel Solas's hands tighten on her hips, and she's pretty sure if she looked – if she could look – his knuckles would be white with strain. His entire body is locked into a self-negating paradox, equal and opposite impulses - to keep her at bay, and to pull her onto him.

"I cannot stop this" he chokes out, and she understands it, understands it at the absolutely basic level of the spell's mechanism. To maintain a dwindling spirit, one must maintain the entire armature that sustains it through the whole of its memories. There is no fast-forward button. They will have to ride out the prerecorded reel to its end.

And so, as Maile's pleasure is rising at her lover's quickening thrusts, she also feels Solas's magic animate not just this nameless ghost that's fucking her, but everything around them – the rickety wall behind her back, the cool rain drops on her face, the damp sea air on her bare skin, the wind in the rustling pines, and, distant, the roar of an alien ocean.

Her host's body climaxes, but of course, so does she, because they are the same by now. She's jolted out of the dreamscape with a harsh inarticulate cry, and a second later, the magic reverbs back to its source. Solas's thumbs caress her hips, a fraction of a movement that still feels momentous somehow, the subtle echo of him losing an invisible battle against himself, and then his entire body shudders, and a soft, desperate little moan is wrenched from his lips.

He sways, and she thinks he will collapse, but he doesn't. She expects him to move his hands away, but once again, he does not.

At this point, tears are rolling down her cheeks, because for a fraction of a second, she sees what she lost to this particular memory. Her daughter is gone. Two years, five months, six days, and as the doctor said, too short a time, and they did everything they could. And now, no more at all, and she is already forgetting, safe for the memory of forgetting itself.

And of course, now he knows this too.

"There's more." She can barely force out a whisper.

After what feels like an eternity, he nods, eyes averted, and she wonders whether he'll ever have the chutzpah to look at her again square in the face.

Or whether she will.

He moves his hands to her abdomen, the place where the recent scar is.

From there, it's easy, comparatively speaking. And the only thing she loses to it is her 30th birthday party, which, lets be honest, she can live without, because too many cocktails, and maybe dancing on the bar table at one point.

She – Maile – walks up to a camp. There are bodies everywhere. Dead, and still warm, while she was otherwise occupied. The patrol. She finds something – an amulet, perhaps – that she examines, carefully. Just like the one her lover wore, but his body is not here, of course.

A carefully premeditated betrayal she feels down to the marrow of her bones.

And then, the blasted Breach, cosmic horror that it is. And she's fighting in a pure, desperate rage that only someone who wants to die would bring into battle.

Before long, she gets her wish. A fiery form – and the word that comes to Margo's mind is Ifrit – gets into her head, her very soul.

And then Solas pulls her out of the dream state, just as the demon eviscerates her.


	7. Chapter 7: Perchance to Dream

When it's done, she just lies on the bed, more exhausted than she can remember ever being. The silence stretches, thick and viscous. She struggles with the enormity of this thing, borne of their misguided experiment, and it feels like her mind will sooner snap than accommodate the contours of what they wrought. Before she loses herself to the impossibility of dealing with this, Margo forces her focus to narrow to the pinprick of a present immediate.

She's done this before. She can do this again. Dealt with the unimaginable. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time. Just keep walking.

She doesn't dare to look at the elf, though, for fear of what she might find there.

There's a whitish glow, and her peripheral vision catches a magical ripple moving across his frame, leaving in its wake the distinct twang of ozone. She takes a glance then, and he wordlessly gestures at her, barely a twinge of his fingers. She surmises he's offering her the same service, without asking her directly whether she would like to… Clean off. She nods, and a quick wave of magic passes over her, barely perceptible. But she feels refreshed, and her clothes are clean and smell of warm grass and thunderstorms.

In-built dry-cleaning. Nifty.

Well, the metaphorical elephant in the room is just going to keep milling about, trampling the precious china, so the least they can do is acknowledge it.

She sits up and maneuvers herself to face him. She feels… hungover.

He is still as a statue, elbows on knees, head hung low, and gaze at the floor.

"Ok." How does she even begin to tackle this? "This… This did not go as planned. But there is nothing to be done for it now, so I'd rather not wallow in all the million shades of fucked-up. Are you alright?"

He looks up then, and Margo shrinks back. Under the tense surface of the elf's now familiar features, she gets a glimpse of something else - a shadow passing in the grey fog of his eyes, there, then out of sight. And for some reason, she is viscerally reminded of the feeling of him, that sense of overwhelming presence, as he animated the memories of Maile's last rendezvous. It puts her in mind of the living landscapes of her world's old shamanic religions, the sense of intent in the very fabric of what would later become mere "natural phenomena." The certain knowledge of a willful consciousness, as intimate as it is unfathomable, whose desires, beyond ken, drown you in their indifferent currents.

Another wrathful deity. Another cosmological horror.

And then, he is, once again, just Solas.

When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet and fierce.

"Did you find what you sought, da'elgar?" Her brain struggles to process the alien words, but then a meaning surfaces, slowly, probably another inheritance from what remained of Maile. It is almost forgotten, like a mother tongue one spoke as a child, but lost from disuse. Little spirit. "Are the scales balanced to your satisfaction now?"

She stills.

"You are angry" she observes, simply. Because, when in doubt, point out the obvious. That always goes over well.

"And you, not? Do you not feel revolted at what we did? This… violation?" He sort of hacks the last word out, like it can't leave his mouth fast enough.

Uh-oh. Is he talking about the sexual part of their walk down memory lane? Sure, it's… all kinds of messy, to say the least, but violation? She feels herself go numb. Her stomach drops. Oh dear Lord, she knows nothing about this guy. Who knows what experiences he is bringing to the table. Perhaps it was deeply awful for him. People have pretty strong preferences when it comes to their choice of sexual partners, and this whole banging by proxy might be entirely outside of what he would consider desirable, or even fathomable.

And then it hits her, and she stares at him in the mute horror of understanding. Because, for her, the whole experience can still retain the natural distance that her culture's habits of mind assign to dream-states. Uncanny, but immaterial. A fugue from the actual. The comfort of "well, that was a fucked-up dream," however real it felt at the time. Even if she no longer buys this, deep down, she can still lie to herself for just a little while longer…

But for him, this has never been an option. For him, what is, is.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to do this, it was selfish and shortsighted of me. I didn't realize it'd go that way. Or that the only useful part of what remained of … Maile… would be this."

She is babbling. She hates babbling.

Apparently, however, it can't be helped.

"To be clear, I don't want you to think that I feel …uh… violated, if this is part of your concern. I mean, Maile certainly had questionable taste in men… And the… technical aspects of it were weird, and not how I'd go about it under normal circumstances… But…" Oh, she is just making such a mess of this. "I am so sorry that this got forced on you. I would have made a stronger draught if I'd had the time, or the skill, but…"

Still babbling. No good.

His expression turns perplexed for a moment.

"Oh." He frowns. And then his cheeks color. "No. Not that. That is not … what I meant." He swallows, peers at her, and then his face softens, and, in the next instant, turns abashed. "That aspect of it was not… It was not horrible. Not how I would prefer to go about it either, as you so tactfully put it, but…" He clears his throat, again, and then colors quite a bit more, realizes this, and looks painfully flustered for a few seconds. And at first Margo is just immensely relieved, the weight of a deep dread she doesn't know how to articulate suddenly lifted.

And then, of course, she realizes belatedly that for him, it wasn't quite the same "by proxy" as for her. Because, as far as he's concerned, he's still looking at the same person he just… Oy.

She is getting butterflies in her stomach. Fucking butterflies. Insufferable insects. Pests, the lot of them. A pox on both their houses.

Oh, no…

"That … let us reserve this particular discussion for another day." He takes a breath, and exhales softly. "I meant the alteration to your spirit. The…melding. Do you not feel how wrong it is?"

She sighs. She doesn't have the lexis for this shit. Fade. Spirits. Hellmouth. Clusterfuck on a stick, magic. Burn the witches, hail the Inquisition, no one ever expects it.

She puts a firm stop to the mental drivel.

"Look." She hesitates, then lays a hand on his knee. He almost doesn't flinch. "There is this law of physics in my world – and it probably works by and large the same way here, because universal laws like to do that. It's called conservation of energy. Put simply, when something accrues somewhere, it has to be taken from somewhere else. You can't just poof stuff into existence. Like what you said about spirits. They have to sort of accumulate in the Fade, right? Like a sort of… ecological habit? So same rules apply. Add a little here, take a little from elsewhere."

He flips his hand up, palm to palm to hers. Hesitates. And then briefly squeezes her fingers. Then he straightens. His face is placid again, safe for the telltale tightness to his jaw.

"This is… an apt metaphor. And I understand your argument." He swallows again, vacillating on the edge of a question. If she didn't know any better, and judging purely by the body language, she'd think he's working up the courage to ask her out – which strikes her as fucking funny, all things considered, and she bites the inside of her cheek to suppress the impending hysterics.

"I would welcome the chance to discuss your world with you at length, as it promises to be a fascinating subject. At some later time."

Ah. Wait. Is he asking her out?

He pauses, but then forges on.

"But it does not change the fact that our clumsy fumbling altered your very essence. My anger is… misdirected. It was I who was selfish. I was curious about the possibilities of the spell. And now, because…" He is clearly looking for words, and when he finds them, they come out with a generous helping of self-loathing. "Because of my failure to… refuse you, even when the responsibility to know better was mine, you are no longer simply Margo – that is your name, yes? You are also this other, this Maile, and…" He shakes his head, once, and looks down at his hands again.

Ah. So he doesn't like Maile very much at all. And that's at least in part the source of his revulsion. And the other part of it is about self-control, but she's too tired and too raw to really give it the analysis it deserves.

She exhales, a profound sadness rolling over her like a dark tide.

"If we count essence by quantity, then I'm still me. The dose of Maile is relatively speaking rather small. And it seems…fitting that something of what remained of her should still be... recorded."

"Not at this cost. Not for those memories…" he whispers.

"Hold on." She tries to set her voice to neutral, and keep the tremor out. "You have them now. Maybe you can simply tell me about them. Or show me at some point? Could this be done? Sure, it won't feel like my own lived experience, but I have enough context to incorporate them into the broader story. And over time, these things tend to get all mixed in anyway. Tricky thing, memory." She smiles, hoping it'll help lift the mood. "See, aren't hermeneutics fun?"

She surprises an incredulous chuckle out of him, but she can tell the cogs are turning again. His expression becomes tentatively hopeful.

"Yes. I believe this may be possible, to a degree. You would have to learn to meet me in the Fade. What you call dreams. There, it would be easier to show you. Do you have some degree of control over your dreaming?"

Is he asking her if she has lucid dreams? She mulls it over.

"Sometimes. Not well. In my world, there are religious traditions with techniques to teach you that, but they are rudimentary compared to what I suspect you have here. I used to try to dabble with that a bit when I was younger, but then it sort of fell by the wayside…"

He perks up.

"Good. Rudimentary is still a step forward, and we will build on whatever base you have. Then this can be done. You should begin to practice as soon as possible. Even if it will not fix what we did, with time you could learn to arrange the memories of this other spirit to fit with yours better. And recuperate some of what you lost."

"Can you really move through your dreams in the same way as when you're awake?"

She looks at him in genuine, excited wonder. This would make for a hell of a book project. Maybe not an academic book, but hey, she could finally write a self-help manual and make the NYT bestseller list.

"Yes. Not everyone is adept at it, but it has always come easily for me. We should see if this particular skill might be in your repertoire of latent talents as well."

With her luck, it isn't, and it's going to be a long hard slog to learn this shit. But if there's anything that will get her off her ass and away from the temptation to descend into hand-wringing misery – oh no, what does it all mean! – it's curiosity. Killed the cat in the end, but it had a fun life while it lasted.

Margo gets up, and, at length, he follows her.

"We should get some sleep."

The unintended irony of her statement is not lost on him. He hesitates for a second, but then his body language shifts. He clasps his hands behind his back, and glides to stand beside her, just a hair closer than polite distance. She can see his face in three-quarter profile, the curve of a sharp cheekbone contoured by the unsteady light of the candle, and she's pretty sure she detects the trace of a smile.

"So soon?" He pauses, seemingly deliberating at a fork in the road. And then, decision made, his smile becomes a bit cheeky, and Margo's ground drops from under her again, but for a whole new set of reasons. "The night is young. Perhaps we can still dredge up a few more of Maile's indiscretions?"

She looks at him, and, yep. His expression is… teasing. Alright, then. So the elf has taken this whole damnable thing in stride, and with panache. She shouldn't have worried about any kind of lack of chutzpah, then. Apparently, he's got it in spades.

Oh, to hell with it.

She blinks at him innocently.

"And here I thought you mentioned that you would prefer a more conventional approach to the task."

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and then he is coughing – rather unconvincingly - into his fist. Margo smiles smugly. What's good for the goose and all that…

His expression turns serious.

"There remains the practical matter of your conversation with the Spymaster. If you are to survive in this world, you must learn all you can about it. Maile's lover was a Tevinter mage. I would guess that her patrol got slaughtered at his behest."

She nods, thinking.

"So, not the Qunari, whoever they are, but…Tevinter?"

"Yes. Leliana will want to know this. As well as why you survived when others did not. I do not recommend... telling her the truth. But be careful that she does not catch you in a lie either."

"As long as she doesn't strap me to a lie detector, I'll manage."

He looks puzzled for a second, then his expression clears, and he nods his understanding.

"She will most certainly make you drink something. And she may or may not restrain you, depending on whether she thinks you present an immediate danger. Do you have your book with you?"

She produces Auntie's compendium from her coat pocket, and pulls the coat on. While she's fussing with the buckles, Solas leafs through until he lands on the desired page, and drums his long fingers against an inscription.

"This one. It is a standard antidote against most poisons that seek to… bend your will."

She leans over to get a better look at the formula, and is suddenly acutely aware of their proximity. He glances down at her, expression unreadable, and for a few moments, their gazes snag.

Time hitches – an eternity packed into a few moments – and then Margo forces her eyes back to the page.

Oh no. No no no. She is so fucked.

"I should go start on it now, while Adan's not around." It comes out sounding totally unconvinced, even to her ears. What the hell is she doing?

She's startled by a movement and a gentle tug, as Solas, damn him, twirls a stray lock of her hair around his finger and proceeds to slowly tuck it back. As he does, his knuckles brush along the shell of her ear, as if inadvertently. And elven ears, as is turns out, are pretty goddamn sensitive.

Her lips part with a soft "oh" before she can stop herself.

He looks… kind of like a cat that got all the canaries, and then chased them down with some cream. And is now giving serious consideration to the goldfish.

He hands back the compendium.

"Sleep well."

It sounds like an invitation.

She cuts him a narrowed-eye look, fishes for a clever come back, and comes up with... absolutely nothing.

Margo proceeds to the door. As she leaves, she could swear she hears the softest of chuckles behind her.

Heavens preserve her from demons, hellmouths, and cheeky, mercurial elves.


	8. Chapter 8: Name your Poison

Margo walks out into a blizzard, and runs to the apothecary, because the wind is slicing right through her coat, and also because she has jitters to burn off. She bursts through the door, shivering, only to find that the shop, which she had hoped would be deserted, is in fact very much occupied.

Master Adan is sitting at the desk with a large bottle of something that looks like it'll put hair on your chest and then burn it right off. And he's not alone. Commander Cullen is perched on a crate, looking in his ridiculous mantle every bit like a ruffled crow. He seems a bit vexed, too. Right. _You know nothing, Jon Snow_. And if that wasn't enough of a crowd, there is also an elven woman she's only briefly seen around the camp – a severe-looking redhead in some kind of fussy embroidered robe.

Well, that puts a damper on her antidote making project.

"Ah, if it's not our prodigal alchemist in the making! Long night? Wherever have you been?"

Uh oh, what is this? Some kind of intervention? Of all the nights they could have picked… Margo narrows her eyes. Master Adan is giving her a slightly mocking look.

Right. Haven. Haven is a village. Villages tend to breed gossip like it's their ticket to wealth, prosperity, and an endless supply of plum liquor. Who needs security cameras when you have a village? Add to that a village that's run like a military camp with the secret police at the helm and you get… well, the Inquisition.

She begins to unfasten her coat because inside the Apothecary the fireplace is roaring and the heat is blistering. Which should account for the sweat suddenly prickling between her shoulder-blades.

"Do pull up a seat, my precocious pupil. I was just filling Commander Cullen and Enchanter Minaeve in on your progress."

What the fuck is this? Unless it is it about his Amrita Vein supply? Did he notice she was poaching from the jar? She barely took anything.

Cullen clears his throat.

"I've been meaning to talk to you… uh, Agent?"

She's pretty sure he wants her to supply a name. What is the likelihood that he would settle for "Prickly"?

"I go by Margo these days," she offers noncommittally, hoping that they'll assume that it is simply one of Leliana's codenames. Spies have codenames, right? There's no way that "Charter" is an actual name, unless her parents really had some kind of weird naming practice where you open a book at random and pick the first word that pops up.

"That doesn't sound Elvhen," Minaeve comments - whose name, of course, does sound "Elv-h-en." All those bright consonants and long vowels.

"It isn't," Margo offers cautiously, and wonders if she should have gone by Maile instead, though that would feel wrong on too many levels.

"You are scheduled to speak with Leliana tomorrow morning, are you not?" Cullen seems like the most neutrally minded of the group. The other two look like they maybe have some additional agenda aside from whatever Cullen is there for. So she focuses on him.

"Yes, I believe she said at first light."

"Good." He nods to himself. "Once that's done with… I – we - have a proposition for you."

Interesting. Does this mean that Torquemada didn't spread her gospel of paranoia about Margo's status as a double agent for whatever the Qun might be? Are the local branches of government not on full disclosure terms? Unless the Spymaster decided to hedge her bets and is actually reasonably sure of Margo's non-involvement, but is lording this over her for other reasons?

"Provided the spymaster finds our conversation to her satisfaction," she supplies, voice as neutral as she can get it.

Cullen nods. "Provided that."

So he must know at least something of Leliana's suspicions.

"I'm listening" she says.

Cullen leans forward on his crate, props his elbows on his knees, and clasps his hands together. The pose seems casual enough, but Margo can't help but notice a kind of… jitteriness to him.

Maybe he's got a secret stash of coffee somewhere.

"As you well know, we are very low on supplies, resources, and people. Insofar as this impacts Master Adan's ability to enhance the Inquisition's work, we need to source more – not just plants, but other ingredients as well. Elfroot, of course, is still a key strategic resource, but we can't limit ourselves to defensive formulas." He stops, and exchanges a look with the others. "We'd like to send you to the field with a small group of men to scout for easily accessible locations of the things we might need. This would be a fairly discreet and low impact mission – you can collect whatever you yourself can carry, and then simply report back to me with a location."

Margo's eyes widen. Send her to the field? Sure, she can dig up some plants, and, as Solas would say, stuff them in a sack, but this? Last time she tried to do that, she almost got eaten by wolves. If it weren't for the elf's timely intervention…

At the thought of said elf, Margo is unhappily surprised by a jolt of vertigo in the pit of her stomach. She winces.

More to the point, how is she supposed to survive without any fighting skills to speak of? Sure, Maile was a stabby sort. "Prickly" indeed. But Maile is no longer the one at the helm, and she can't just rely on instinct, hoping somehow she will magically be able to perform, like some kind of medieval Neo. "I know Kung-Fu." Sure, hun. That is an effective way of getting herself killed in the first two minutes.

She casts Cullen a quick glance. He's waiting patiently for her response, safe for a slight tremor in his left leg. Odd. He doesn't strike her as the neurotic type.

"Commander Cullen, I … ah, appreciated the vote of confidence." And she hopes he catches the double meaning, in regards to whatever Torquemada might have been telling him. "But as you know, I was severely injured in the last battle, and I seem to be having trouble recalling basic combat techniques. I think I will be more useful to the Inquisition in a civilian capacity."

At this point, Master Adan pipes up. "Since I am formally the closest thing you have to someone who's willing to take responsibility for your ingredient pilfering, dangerous alchemical formula improvising hide…" He gives her a very pointed look. But… it's not really an angry one. More amused and exasperated. "I get to decide whether this would be helpful to me in my civilian capacity."

She smiles at him, probably totally sheepishly. She likes Adan. And he is right. He did take a chance on her.

"So, unless Lady Nightingale has other ideas about what to do with you, I think we should start planning for your first expedition." Adan concludes.

Cullen offers her a surprisingly friendly smile.

"As to the other issue, I've seen this sort of loss of function happen after head injuries. In my experience, skills can be retrained, provided dedication and hard work. Until we are able to increase our ranks, and hopefully add more specialized trainers, Cassandra and I will take turns working with you. Varric can help with some of the footwork, he's closer in training to you than either of us, but you still need to re-learn how to hold you own against heavily armored opponents."

Margo looks between the three of them in puzzlement. Is the Inquisition this desperate for cadres?

And then, she reminds herself that she is not really an unknown quantity to them. Maile had fought alongside Cullen's and Cassandra's men.

She has almost forgotten about Minaeve, which is the point when the elf chooses to intervene. Naturally.

"While you're out running your errands, would you do me a favor? My research depends on procuring some very specific ingredients from… Are you squeamish, agent?"

"Depends on what you're asking for," Margo offers cautiously. This is going to be some gnarly animal parts stuff, isn't it? Some kind of rare gland of some rare beast that's going to eat you dead before you have a chance to get close to any glands it might have.

"In alchemy, we use anything that is useful, and we are always seeking to expand our repertoire of substances," Adan offers helpfully, pours himself two fingers of an opaque bright pink liquid that looks a whole lot like Pepto-Bismol from his bottle, and downs it in one gulp.

Cullen, looking a little pained at this point, decides to cut to the chase.

"You're going to run into some things we don't know much about. Demons, mainly. If anything useful remains from them once your contingent is done, Enchanter Minaeve here would like to take a look."

"I would. Try not to damage the samples too much as you bring them back."

"Although of course I expect you to bring some ingredients for the shop as well," Adan adds, with a slightly cross look at the elven woman. We'll be starting on ichors next week after you get a hang of the basics.

The matter apparently settled, Adan passes out mismatched receptacles in lieu of shot glasses. Cullen gets a clay mug, Minaeve something that is probably a wine glass, though the word "goblet" seems more fitting, and Margo gets a beaker. Adan pours the round, and despite the difference between the mismatched china, she is pretty sure he's given them all the exact same amount. Alchemists…

"What is this, exactly?" Margo finally asks, after sniffing the substance. It does not, in fact, smell like Pepto-Bismol. It has a distinctly ferrous odor…

"Archdemon's Tears, it's called."

Margo quirks an eyebrow. "Is it?"

Adan guffaws, and then he's joined by Minaeve's rather more delicate trilling laughter. Even Cullen smiles his lopsided smile that's eerily like Jake's.

"Of course not, lass. It's fermented dragon's blood with demon ichor extract. It's what gives it that frothy, slippery consistency." He swirls the disgusting thing in his glass with obvious relish. "Master Taigan had a bottle he had squirreled away for a special occasion."

Wait. Did he say dragon? Dragon's blood? As in, dragons are an actual thing?

Instead, Margo, ever the diplomat, asks "So what's the occasion?"

Cullen nods. "I guess we could say 'field season,' but to be honest with you, this is more of an ablation to whatever deities might be listening. We're sending a team out tomorrow with…ah…Lady Trevelyan."

Margo stills. They're sending the kid out to the field? Tomorrow? What the actual fuck are these people thinking?

"Right. Have to start somewhere, Commander." Adan raises his glass, and forces Cullen to toast with him. Minaeve makes some weird hand gesture over the booze first – could be an offering to the gods, or could be just a plain old spell to make the shit taste less foul for all she knows – and raises her glass too.

They are all looking at her expectantly, so Margo, with an internal wince, joins in the toast.

"To not everyone getting slaughtered right away," Adan proposes tactfully.

Cullen shakes his head, and then kind of shrugs. "You know what, Adan, I will drink to that."

And they all do. The drink tastes exactly as you'd expect.

Once Margo is done blinking tears out of her eyes and clearing the burn from her throat, she turns her gaze to Cullen. At least he seems a bit more relaxed now. The leg tremor's gone.

"You are sending Evie out to get this healer in the Hinterlands, aren't you?"

There's a flash of surprise, but then he hides it quickly. "We have to." He sighs. "We all know she's not ready." He stares down at his drink, expression conflicted. A man responsible for the lives of others, making difficult calculations. "Solas, Cassandra, and Varric are really the only people who are remotely qualified to accompany her, though Andraste's Ashes, I am loathe to risk them. Any of them. But we truly are out of time. Leliana's scouts will lay the ground in preparation as much as they can." He shrugs. "Did I mention we are stretched thin? That was an understatement." He rubs the back of his head. "I just hope they all make it back in one piece."

Margo's entire world careens off kilter. Oh, Evie, kiddo.

The sheer anxiety of it is almost like a physical pain – the kid, but then, not just her of course, but the others, too. Varric, and the fact that she still owes him a beer, and wants to actually sit down and really hear his stories, both the ones that are inconsequential, and the ones that are deeply important to him, which he seems to mix in with the trifling ones so that no one would know which is which. And Cassandra – much as Margo likes to poke fun of the warrior princess's earnest intensity – feels like she would die to protect Evie in a heartbeat, and Margo doesn't want to miss the chance to get to know what else might be there.

Solas. Oh, bloody hell, heavens have mercy, Solas. There is no way that this should feel like such a punch to the kidneys, but… Well.

And over all of it, the sense of profound uncertainty about how much time any of them have left.

She reminds herself that they are all – well, except for Evie – battle-ready and trained, more than she will ever be. They can take care of themselves. But she would be blind not to notice the tension around Cullen's eyes, and the way that Master Adan really has been guzzling booze like he wants to numb whatever thoughts he might be having on the prospective success of the whole operation.

And it really boils down to Torquemada's framing of the whole thing, crows take her shriveled little heart. They are all disposable. Cassandra, Varric, Cullen, Adan, and all of the Spymaster's little birds, of course. Solas. Herself. If Evie can actually close the cosmic holes, they are all expendable, except for her. No matter what happens, Evie must live. And she thinks that any of the others – whatever their particular agendas might be – would lay their lives to protect hers. And if Evie can't fight – and not just that, but can't stay out of the way – then the others have to compensate.

She rubs her face. One step at a time. Foot in front of the other. She's got other things to worry about right now.

"When do you want me to go?" she asks Cullen.

"A day, two at most," he answers. "You'll be following closely in the footsteps of the main team to lend a hand if needed. At the very least, you can keep the field infirmary stocked and operative. We can't keep sitting on our hands for longer than that."

Adan pours another round, and they all drink it in silence. The second time around the foul shit doesn't burn quite as much.

After that Cullen gets up and says his goodbyes. Minaeve and Adan don't appear to be in a hurry to depart, and Margo has the unpleasant suspicion that there is another conversation that is about to happen once the Commander is out of ear shot.

She's right.

"So…" Adan starts, with a quick look to Minaeve, who gives him a subtle nod.

Margo makes a face that she hopes conveys polite interest.

"You were trained by a hedge-witch, you say."

Margo blinks at him. Where is this going? "I was, yes."

"Raised by one?"

Margo hesitates, and then nods. She's pretty sure that baba would have been just tickled at being called a hedge-witch.

"But you yourself are not an apostate? You do not have magic." Minaeve observes, with just a tiny note of haughtiness.

"That's correct. None whatsoever, as far as I know."

Adan smiles to himself, somehow pleased.

"Here is the thing, fledgling. The profession has rules. Like everything else has rules. Hierarchies. Levels of accomplishment. If you're a mage trained in a Circle, there are some magics you can use, and others you can't. Same rules apply with Alchemy."

She makes a mental note to figure out what a Circle is. Either way, this is going to be a lecture about helping herself to ingredients and mixing up random potions out of turn she's pretty sure. She braces herself for an exposition on proper professional conduct.

"But apostates… like, say, your friend Solas..." at this Adan gives her a very weighty look "...don't have quite the same compunctions. They are, as it were, outside the law, and will use magic in whatever way they see fit."

Ok, maybe a lecture about the dangers of associating with apostates?

"Put very bluntly, I don't have time to train you in the proper order. The world is ending. This Inquisition here is hanging on by a thread. Yet, there are basic rules. You need to at least be an Apprentice to be able to do some of the work we need. Transmogrifying metals, for one. Even so much as touching lyrium, for another."

Margo's eyes widen. He's talking about ritual empowerments. It's a living lineage tradition, but with empowerments, which means there's going to be distinct theories of potency and a whole cosmological system that comes with that. Secret knowledge. She could do a whole monograph on this, and there she was, struggling with coming up with a solid second research project. And she can do ethnography-based research. Take that, tenure promotion committee!

Except, of course, it's unlikely that she'll get tenure at her university considering her original body's likely not showing up at work anymore, if it's even alive, but details, right? She can be an independent scholar. At least, she won't have to deal with the Institutional Review Board to get her research approved. Take that, IRB.

Margo finds herself grinning like a maniac.

Adan and Minaeve exchange a look.

"Did I mention to you that she's an odd lass?"

"Once or twice," Minaeve offers dryly.

"In any case, this is why Minaeve is here. We need a witness."

"We are going to do this now?" Margo asks, somewhere between excited and terrified. She doesn't even have a notebook to write all this down. Or a recorder. Ethnographers use recorders, right?

"No sense in delaying it."

"So what do I do?"

Adan straightens, and adopts and officious expression.

"Enchanter Minaeve is going to pick a formula for you to make. Traditionally, the chosen potion is a poison, and you will then have however much time you have left to make an antidote, and counteract its effects."

Well, that doesn't sound like a very sustainable way of going about it. Margo wonders what the attrition rate for alchemy students is.

Minaeve gives her a tense smile.

"Don't worry. Adan and I have already discussed this. The test is largely a formality, and because we are doing it in such a hurried manner – and because you already do have some training – I have picked a formula that will make you… uncomfortable, but most likely will not kill you."

Another silent look passes between Adan and the elf.

Margo looks at the Enchanter more carefully. There's something distinctly… devious about Minaeve's expression. It's going to be an emetic, isn't it? Or something else that causes digestive unpleasantness.

Not one to waste valuable time, Minaeve passes her a velum. Margo takes it, noting the slight tremor in her hand as she does. This is all well and good, but really, they have to do this today of all days? She's had enough wonky formulas to last her at least a week. And there is the matter of her talk with Leliana, though perhaps she can kill two birds with one stone, and make the antidote for both occasions.

She lays the vellum down on the workstation, and puts Auntie's compendium next to it.

"How much time do I have?" she asks, settling into the new task.

"However much you need," Minaeve offers, and again, she seems a little… gleeful, for lack of a better word.

Oh, this is going to suck.

The name of the formula on top of the ingredient list is not particularly legible. Something that starts with "Imsh" or "Imsn" - the rest is illegible - and then another word, which to her reads like "barge," or "farge." At least the ingredient list is not too complicated. One measure of "Some Fungus", also known as Deep Mushroom, of the Blightcap variety. Sounds unpleasant. Three measures of Amrita Vein, which she already knows. And five measures of something called "Witherstock." Grind, mix, boil, and add a spoonful of honey.

As she starts to assemble the ingredients, Master Adan passes her a jar of something containing a reddish-brown powder that smells like an unholy mixture of vanilla bean and three-day-old dirty socks.

"Witherstock," he offers, by way of an explanation.

At this, he and the Enchanter exchange yet another pointed look. Aha, so this witherstock is likely what will cause the toxicity.

In about fifteen minutes she has a dry mixture to set on a water bath, and she peeks at the antidote formula that Solas had pointed out to her.

Except, of course, there's a hitch.

"Adan? Do we have a seven-year old red headed bastard's urine on hand? Or do we substitute? And by bastard, does Auntie Ines mean a child out of wed-lock, or is that a commentary on the donor's character?"

Adan chokes on his Archdemon's Pepto-Bismol. "You're trying to make Andraste's Promise? Why?" He frowns. "That's against mind-warping potions. How did you kn-..." He cuts himself off.

Again, that silent look. This time, a very suspicious one. Aha. Good to know. So… not bowel movement troubles. The formula they want her to drink must be some kind of mind-altering substance. A hallucinogen? She's had enough hallucinations for the day, thank you very much.

"Can I make it? As in, do we have the ingredients?"

Adan shrugs. "You can use the urine of a red-haired druffalo instead of the original. But there's also a simplified formula. One that skips the Dawn Lotus root. It's not as effective, of course, but in a pinch…"

Right, so no dawn lotus root, no detoxifying in urine necessary, and hence, no red-headed bastards required. Sounds good.

Master Adan takes the opportunity to write out the less fussy recipe next to Auntie's original one. Margo takes a look. A five ingredient deal, fairly straight forward by the looks of it. She can do it.

"As a reminder, you cannot start on the antidote before you have ingested the assigned potion. The point of this test is not just to see how well you acquit yourself in the technical aspects of the craft, but whether you have the strength of character for the practice." That prissy tirade is from Minaeve, of course.

It does make some sense. She should be able to work under duress. She just hopes that if it is a hallucinogenic, her mind doesn't manifest something really unpleasant, like, say, murderous psychotic clowns. Psychotic clowns would be distracting.

Another ten minutes of minding the water bath, and the concoction is ready. It no longer smells of vanilla. Just socks.

She picks up the pot with a rag, and pours its contents into a fresh beaker.

"Do I wait for it to cool? Or can I sip it?"

Maybe there's a nifty magical way to cool the liquid.

Master Adan hands her another beaker. "Just…" he waves his hand "Pour it back and forth a bit."

Ooh. High tech.

She does as instructed, pouring the potion from one beaker to the other until it's drinkable.

"How much of it do I need?"

Adan holds up two fingers. Right. Double shot. She measures out approximately 40 ml, and leaves the rest of the brew on the table.

"Not toasting to all living beings this time," she cautions.

Adan just shakes his head in bafflement.

She knocks it back.

Yup. Socks.

She waits. When nothing interesting happens, Margo gets up and starts gathering ingredients for Andraste's Promise. A strange whispering sound tickles her ears, but other than that, everything seems much the same. No clowns. So far so good.

The antidote calls for dried bees. She's pretty sure she's seen a jar of them on the top shelf. She reaches, grabs it, and when she turns around, there is a third guest in the room.

Ah shit.

Well, at least it's not a clown.

Solas is leaning casually against a bookshelf, every bit the Leftist intellectual, complete with the slightly mocking smirk.

Margo cuts him a dirty look and hauls her bees to the work table.

"Don't you have a revolution to start?" she grumbles under her breath.

"What interesting trouble did you get yourself into this time, da'elgar?"

She's about to inform him that he doesn't, technically, exist, except something is definitely going wonky with her now. The sound of his voice sends a shiver down her spine, and then it settles somewhere in the general direction of what her very perky yoga instructor, a lifetime ago, liked to call her "root chakra." As in, "you should feel this stretch in your root chakra," which, obviously, is a lot more palatable to the bourgeois sensibilities of middle-class urban yogis than its crasser anatomical analogue.

Oh, hell no. Really? A hallucinogenic aphrodisiac? That's what they decided to go with?

She cuts a glance to Adan and Minaeve. The bastards are all settled in, clearly intent on watching the show.

"Enchanter Minaeve, would you consider donating some urine at a later date?" Margo asks acerbically. Maybe any old red-headed bastard would do.

Minaeve looks suitably incensed. Adan just grins.

"Ah, I think it's kicked in."

Solas – who is really not there, Margo reminds herself – moves to stand beside the work table, presumably to get a better look at what she's doing. Her body, of course, isn't at all buying the illusory nature of the whole experience, because her heartbeat quickens, and a not altogether unpleasant - though certainly uncomfortable - pulling sensation spreads through her lower belly. She forces herself to pick up the mortar and pestle to start on the bees. Right. Bees. Grinding bees into powder. A completely reasonable task, that. Very absorbing.

Except, she can barely focus with him there.

"Shoo," Margo tells the phantom, feeling both cross with herself, and with him, and with the whole absurdity of the situation. She's met with an amused little smirk. "Fine. Minimally, make yourself useful."

This, apparently, was not the right thing to say.

The illusory elf glides right behind her then, his legs almost brushing the back of her thighs as she leans over her work. She stills. And then – she should ask him to donate some urine too while she's at it, maybe just about any bastard would do – slides his hands over her hips, and pulls her gently against himself. She watches, a little mesmerized, as one hand then lands next to Auntie's book on the workbench. The other arm encircles her waist, and locks her firmly in place. And then he leans forward a bit, and rests his chin on her shoulder, lips at her ear.

"Ah. What have they made you drink? Something that creates a little pocket of Fade for you to get lost in, it seems" he whispers. "I may be able to… help."

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" she manages to grind out, around a furiously beating pulse in her throat.

"What makes you think that I am not?" he chuckles, and she can feel its rumble against her back.

Oh hell on a stick, what if it's not entirely a hallucination? Wait. Maybe then she can reason with him – somehow impart on him that this shit's important, and she's in the middle of something here. (What is she in the middle of, exactly? Something to do with bees. Bees? Why the hell is she pulverizing the poor things?) But of course, it's taking everything she's got not to, say, shimmy her hips - purely out of academic curiosity, mind you – and see what reaction might ensue. Of course, it might look a bit undignified, with the peanut gallery sitting there at the edge of their seats. But on the other hand, it's not like they can see the hallucination. And the hallucination probably doesn't see them, either. Besides, people shimmy all the time, for all kinds of reasons, don't they? And when else will she have the opportunity to test whether hallucinations follow a predetermined script, or adapt to input from their environment?

So, she does it. And there is definitely a reaction. And a very solid one at that, for a phantom. She's also sort of pressed more tightly against the work table, and has to brace herself against it with both hands, lest she collapse into the damnable bees.

"I am reasonably sure I could help with that as well, if that is your wish."

The peanut gallery leans forward. All they're missing is popcorn.

Right. A test of will. Wasn't that Enchanter Minaeve little shtick?

"I'm a little busy," she manages.

Another chuckle she feels right down to her core.

"So it appears. Then do not let me distract you."

She exhales through her teeth. At least the bees are kind of powdery now. What was that about Rashvine?

"Don't flatter yourself, elf. You're only in my head," she grumbles, with a whole lot less certainty that she'd like, and of course, the hallucination knows this perfectly well because it succumbs to another fit of quiet hilarity.

"Only in your head, am I? Should I take this as a challenge? Or an invitation?" the so-not-real elf asks, and then his teeth graze her earlobe. Margo's legs turn liquid, and she's pretty sure the only thing keeping her upright is the work table, and the phantom's unreasonably tangible grip.

"Please." At this point, it's more of a whimper, really. The blasted concoction must be in full swing, because all she can think of is what his lips might taste like, and whether he's ok with tongue. Although they are better positioned for other sorts of things. They could just cut to the chase, and keep the kissing for after. Which opens a whole other avenue for speculations. "Don't sabotage me," she finally whispers, before all capacity for critical thinking evaporates.

Solas, who is not there at all, of course, stills. And then the illusion steps back, and Margo can breathe a little bit more effectively again.

"Ah, vhenan. Is that the word?" For a hallucination, there is very convincing regret in his voice, but also something... not quite right, like a subtle dissonance. "I wouldn't dream of it. Things are always… easier here. Easy to get carried away. Forgive me."

She looks at him then, and in that moment, her mind almost cracks at the irresolvable uncertainty of his presence.

"Help me get through this?" she finally pleads, trying, and largely failing, to keep her eyes locked with his, and not on his lips, or the line of his jaw, or the sharp contour of his cheekbones, or the cute dimple on his chin or… further down on all the other details she hasn't really had a chance to properly consider yet. The elf, damn him, notices this of course, and imposes no such artificial restrictions on himself. Margo feels her cheeks burn at what is, by any definition, a rather exploratory gaze.

"You're a tease, and a flirt, and I will sprinkle stinging nettles in your underwear drawer if you don't desist," she promises.

He cocks an eyebrow, clearly amused, and considers her with another one of his little smirks.

"That's cheating!" Minaeve pipes up, a bit belatedly. "You cannot solicit help from or threaten the illusions."

"No, that's absolutely within the rules." That's Master Adan, and when Margo looks, he is actually giving her an encouraging smile, and a firm nod.

She's still going to get these two for this. Vengeance. Cold dish. All that.

"And what would you require of me?" Solas, who might or might not be really there, asks.

Too many things, apparently, Margo thinks, because pretending to yourself that you're not stuck in emotional entanglement shit creek without a paddle isn't a very effective way to get the proverbial canoe moving.

"Distract me in other ways. Tell me about your travels in the Fade," she asks instead.

He smiles, and perches on the side of the desk, next to the workstation. As she works, slowly, pulled taught by the tug of war between her mind and her body, he tells her of dwarven ruins and forgotten spirits, of warriors and ancient battlefields. The images he conjures are overwhelmingly dark - every single one a story of desolation, ruin, and loss. Still, on a better day, she would be delighted at his penchant for a iambic meter. But with the hellish concoction coursing through her, she feels the cadence of his speech as her own heartbeat, a burn in her veins she does not have a name for.

And then, the antidote is done, and she drinks it right away, scorching herself in the process.

She looks at her hallucinatory companion.

"Thank you," she says simply.

He smiles.

"It was... a pleasure, little spirit. I am sure we will meet again."

And then, with a greenish shimmer, he's gone.

"Congratulations, Apprentice." Master Adan says. "You passed with flying colors."

The Enchanter makes a noncommittal humph, and picks up the rest of the hellish potion.

"We will be taking this now."

"To dispose of safely," Master Adan supplies, with a quick glance at the elven woman.

Margo looks between the pair. Sure you will, you pervy bastards. Right down the hatch.

And then she marches off to the attic, and collapses on the mattress. She's asleep in under a minute. And mercifully, there are no dreams.


	9. Chapter 9: By Ommission

The first few moments of wakefulness, Margo has absolutely no idea where she is. She reaches over, expecting Mindy's furry butt strategically parked on the pillow next to her, but finds nothing – no cat butt, and no pillow, only some kind of prickly texture that smells of hay, and, faintly, bats.

It comes back to her then, and for the first time since she's landed in this insane whatever it is… Dimension? Universe? Reality?... She has a visceral feeling of dislocation.

She groans and sits up. Her body's general state is fairly typical of your standard, run of the mill, hangover. Or, if you want to be a bit more precise about it, what happens to the body when it's tasked with processing too much of a toxic substance in too short of a time. Except, there is an additional layer of unpleasantness, whereby the body itself doesn't feel like it fits quite right.

Which, all things considered, is still pretty typical of a hangover.

She forces herself into an upright position, desperately wishing for a hot shower, or better yet, a long hot soak, and then proceeds to put on clothes that really could stand a wash as well. She doesn't remember undressing. She considers briefly that she should be ravenous, but the thought is an abstraction, with very little bearing on reality. Instead, her stomach feels like it's having an identity crisis about its role in the great digestive scheme of things.

Well, what do you know, Minaeve's chosen potion really did cause unpleasant gastric symptoms after all.

The memories of the previous night are…not fuzzy, exactly, but so entirely surreal that she has no idea how to begin to process any of them. She firmly puts the entire clusterfuck aside. She'll deal with it later. She's pretty sure it'll all be still there right where she left it.

Margo stumbles down to the first floor of the apothecary, and peers out of the window. It's still dark, so she presumably has some time until "first light," whatever that is.

There is a note, next to a stoppered bottle on the table, as well as a carafe of some kind of liquid, and a plate of bread, cheese, and pickled vegetables.

"Apprentice,

Congratulations, again. Welcome to the ranks (officially).

Drink the draught – your liver will thank you for it. If you're still alive by afternoon, come find Cullen and I for further instructions.

~A.

PS: You did well for yourself, fledgling. I've seen Imshael's Bargain really do a number on much more experienced candidates. Fun as it is to watch, I had hoped you'd manage to weasel through, and you did.

PPS: You're going to want to puke your guts out this morning, but make sure you eat anyway."

She re-reads the note once more, and then folds it and tucks it away into her coat pocket.

She drinks the draught first, which tastes very pleasantly of verbena and hibiscus, and less pleasantly of rotten eggs.

But it does the job rather quickly. By the time she manages to convince herself that the need to eat is not just a cultural construction and starts in on the cheese and bread, she's feeling more or less like her old self. Or new self. Whatever.

Just as Margo pours some of the still warm liquid from the clay carafe – and it doesn't smell like coffee, but there is definitely an earthy, nutty aroma to it that's telling her nose that it's bitter and just might have caffeine - there's a knock on her door.

She startles.

"It's me, Prickly. You presentable?"

Margo walks over to the door, and lets the dwarf in. The storm outside has subsided, but only after delivering about three feet of snow in its wake, which means that there is a Varric-sized tunnel in the snowbank leading up to the Apothecary.

"Come in. You must be freezing. Want some… uh…something warm to drink?"

She was about to say coffee.

"Thanks, Prickly. Maker's Balls, it's cold."

Varric knocks the snow off his boots, proceeds inside, and quickly occupies the chair vacated earlier by Enchanter Minaeve. Margo gives him a passably clean beaker, and pours from the carafe.

They settle across each other at the desk.

"So. To what do I owe the pleasure?" Margo ventures. Because, really, that is a remarkably early visit.

"Well… I volunteered as the designated escort for your little conversation with Leliana, and since I've been on the pointy end of those talks, I figured I'd come by and give you a sense of how these tend to proceed."

The dwarf sounds sarcastic and dead serious all at the same time.

"My guess would be, mostly badly" Margo offers.

"Yep. Emotional manipulation, mind games, threatening your loved ones, ideological guilt trips about how much of a bad Andrastean you are, and when all else fails, good old torture. The classic repertoire."

Margo sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose. Not that she didn't suspect something like this already, but hearing it from the horse's mouth is a whole new magnitude of unpleasant.

"So. As the recipient of the aforementioned treatment. Do you think there's anything I can do to make the whole experience…less life-threatening?"

Varric grins, and takes a big gulp of his non-coffee. Then proceeds to help himself to a pickle.

"As a matter of fact, Prickly, I do." He chews, with a distinctly contemplative look. "You should always tell the truth. Just decide which truth you're fine with them knowing."

Margo considers this. The trouble is that she herself doesn't have a very firm way of evaluating the "truthfulness" of any of this world's propositions, in particular after last night's debacles. And outside of some kind of zany "I come in peace, take me to your leader," which she is pretty sure will notgo over well with the Spymaster, all other truths seem to have a bad case of relativity.

"Varric, can I ask you a rather random question?"

Varric leans back, ankle over one knee, arm over the back of his chair, non-coffee in hand. Margo notes that the dwarf is really not timid about his chest hair.

"I love random questions, Prickly. They always make for the best stories."

Great.

"How can you tell if something's an illusion?" She pauses, considering. "As in, how can you tell that something is actually true? Not only in your head, but actually the reflection of an objective reality? Like, the Fade, say?"

Varric whistles between his teeth.

"You know, asking a dwarf about the Fade is sort of like asking a blind man what color the sky is."

He takes a sip from his cup.

Margo frowns.

"Lets hypothetically say that you're exposed to something that causes you to hallucinate. I'm trying to figure out whether the hallucinations are just in my head, or if they've got some grounding in truth."

Varric looks at her with his very unassumingly careful stare, and then nods.

"I see what you're getting at, Prickly. But I don't think there's an easy answer to that. Let's take a few different examples. I knew a guy once – real nug-humping dipbag, that one – but he got ahold of a very powerful artefact, and sure enough, he went completely ballistic. Lots of slaughtering of innocents and such. But does it mean the stuff the artifact was whispering had no basis in reality? I'm not sure."

He's still mulling it over, so Margo waits for him to continue.

"On the other hand, you have your run of the mill desire demon that feeds you happy thoughts until you're pretty much nothing more than a drooling husk. And in the end, it always turns out that it's just a purple lady with a cone-shaped head and a really impressive rack. But you'd never know just by looking at it."

Margo feels goosebumps spread along her spine.

"A desire demon?"

Varric shrugs.

"I mean, some have specific names, mostly though they tend to go with whatever's in vogue with the clientele of, say, The Blooming Rose. Not to say that all the girls at the Rose are desire demons, mind you, though there was that one time…"

Margo decides that whatever kind of establishment The Blooming Rose is, it is unlikely to be a burger joint.

"Wait…"

Then, the proverbial light bulb goes off… Or, rather, flickers on with a splutter, because her capacity for critical thinking is not at its sharpest this morning. Really, she should have put two and two together earlier.

"So there are demons. And then there are spirits. Are they qualitatively analogous?"

Varric harrumphs.

"You know, Prickly, you and Chuckles would really hit it off. He's a sucker for a fancy turn of phrase too. And he likes to overthink everything. Anyway, that's the golden nug question, right there. Depends on who you ask. If you want the Chantry version, then yeah, they're all bad news, all hell-bent on destroying humanity and leading poor hapless Templars and mages into temptation. If you want a more nuanced answer, you really ought to talk to Solas. Just don't tell Curly I sent you, he'll get his knickers in a twist and then go tattle to the Seeker. We're going to be ass deep in apostates and Templars as it is, and I really don't want another lecture on the dangers of moral relativism as we trudge through the mess in the Hinterlands."

Why is it that every conversation with the dwarf seems to end with "go ask Solas"?

"How did we get to this topic anyway? Are you seeing weird shit too, in addition to memory loss?"

"Something like that."

"How's your memory, then? Anything come back?"

Margo nibbles on a piece of cheese as she thinks. Eventually, she shrugs.

"Actually, yes. Some of it."

Varric nods.

"Well, lets hope whatever you got makes the Spymaster happy. And on that note… You ready for the chopping block?"

She supposes there's no point in delaying the inevitable, so Margo picks up the rest of the antidote from the previous night, and downs the by now cold liquid with a disgusted shudder. Sorry, liver.

They walk out of the Apothecary and make their way towards the temple. The sky is overcast, but the early morning gloom seems to suggest that somewhere, in a better world, the sun is thinking of making an appearance. She supposes that "first light" is not designed to be an exact description.

The camp is oddly lively already. People are bustling about busily, carrying crates and sacks in every imaginable direction. Soldiers, their faces still soft with sleep, trail down towards the training grounds.

"Animated this morning" Margo remarks, mostly to herself.

"Like a bunch of pissed-off wasps that got their nest trampled. That's the thing, Prickly. We're slated to leave mid-morning."

The dwarf's voice is not particularly jovial.

"You're also of the persuasion that this is a bad idea?"

Varric sighs.

"I just have a bad feeling about this. And the thing is, I'm usually right about these things."

They stop a few yards from the Spymaster's tent.

"Listen, in case shit goes tits up for either of us…"

She pivots to face the dwarf, and sure enough, there is no trace of his usual humor. He looks… like someone who's seen too many things go "tits up" in his lifetime, and is proper sick of it.

"You want me to relay any sort of message? I know you and Evie hit it off. Something tells me the kid would feel better with a pep talk in person, but failing that, do you want me to pass your warm regards?"

Margo forces a smile.

"Tell her to not get killed. And to stay away from fruity drinks." She hesitates. "And tell her she can do this."

He grins at her.

"I can do that. Don't worry. Our friend Jan is not getting anywhere near her while I'm around, or he'll have a nice little chat with Bianca's business end. Besides, the Seeker is enough of a fun repellant in her own right, can't imagine there'll be too many amorous suiters with her around. Anything else? How about Chuckles, any messages for him?"

She can't help but wonder why he's asking. But of course, she has a suspicion that Varric notices a whole lot more than he lets on.

"Just…" What the hell can she actually say? "Tell him that next time he suggests I make a formula that requires druffalo piss – or any other kind of bodily fluid - I'm going to send him to collect it."

Varric guffaws.

"That, Prickly, I will relay, just to see the expression on his face."

She considers him for a few seconds.

"Varric, stay safe. All of you. I still owe you a beer, remember?"

"Oh, don't worry. I never forget." He claps her on the shoulder. "See you on the other side."

And with this, he turns around, and starts trudging down the slope. Margo squashes the feeling that she's not going to see any of them again with a firm mental whack, and covers the distance to the tent.

As it turns out, Torquemada is already waiting, once again contemplating her maps. Does she ever get cold? Scratch that, does she ever sleep? Or eat? Or do anything besides being quietly menacing?

"Ah, good of you to come in such a timely fashion, Agent. Shall we?"

Margo nods, and follows the woman towards the temple. They walk in silence into the structure's foyer, and for a few seconds, Margo gawks at the soaring columns and beautiful masonry. The building is truly majestic in its own right, and on a better day, she would love to get a sense of its layout, to try to glean the underpinning symbolism of its architecture.

"This way" Torquemada directs, and before she knows it, they are descending down a narrow stone staircase into what is either a crypt, or a dungeon, or a combination of the two. Torquemada, for her part, keeps herself just a few feet behind, and Margo has to contend with the unnerving feeling that at any point she might get shoved down the stairs.

She wonders briefly at the absence of guards. Either the Spymaster is reasonably sure that Margo will not try anything funny, or that she can take her without any assistance. Of course, she's not wrong, but she can't possibly know that – so what's the catch?

They make it down to a room with a desk, two chairs, and something that looks a whole lot like a rack of primitive dentistry instruments, although Margo is reasonably certain that their actual purpose is not to mend the results of poor dental hygiene.

"Please" the Spymaster offers. "Do sit."

The chair looks unassuming enough. Margo sits.

"Do not let our lack of escort deceive you, my agents are everywhere in the building. If you try to resist, you will not get much further than the confines of this room" Torquemada informs her in a light conversational tone.

As if to prove this point, an elf with a large burn scar across one cheek partially obscured by an oversized green hood materializes from behind a column – although the effect is more like he's just risen out of primordial emptiness – and snaps a pair of manacles on Margo's wrists before she can even try to put up any sort of protest.

Torquemada, for her part, brings back a neat little leather case from the dentistry rack, and unfolds it on the table. Predictably, its contents do not inspire optimism.

"I have no taste for this sort of thing, Agent" Torquemada informs her, and by the tone of her voice, Margo actually believes her. This is all business, no pleasure. "So I am hoping we can avoid any unnecessary unpleasantness, and keep the conversation civil. And to this end…"

She extracts a needle from the case, and proceeds to dip it into a narrow vial of murky liquid. Margo hopes it's some kind of disinfectant solution, because otherwise, she really can't recall when her last tetanus booster was.

"Hold out your hand, please."

"May I ask what this is?" she manages, because asking an excessive amount of technical questions about unpleasant procedures is how she's always dealt with doctors' appointments and other such encounters. Not that she's had experience with outright torture before…

"Ah, of course. I forget that you are now pursuing Alchemy. This is something that was developed by the Antivan Crows, specifically for interrogating assassins that are suspected of going rogue. The recipe is a trade secret, you understand, but I can tell you a little bit about the effects, if you're interested."

Assassins gone rogue? Oh dear Lord…

"By all means" Margo grits through her teeth, which she's desperately trying to keep from chattering uncontrollably.

Torquemada smiles pleasantly.

"Here." Before Margo can react, the red-head – should ask her for some urine too - jabs the needle into the tip of Margo's finger. The prick is sharp, but no worse than getting a blood sample.

"Good. Now, while it's taking effect… The reason we use this now is that anything administered orally is too easily counteracted with something like Andraste's Promise or any other readily available antidote. You know, it's quite funny, even something as simple as charcoal can offset a lot of effects. And we don't want that."

Is she talking about activated carbon? They have activated carbon in Thedas? Margo shakes her head. Of course they do.

And of course, they would have anticipated any commonly available antidote.

"And this particular formula has the advantage of doing a lot of the work that would be traditionally done by a specialist without resorting to more…intensive procedures. This profession can be difficult on people."

Right. Torturers get burned out. Who would have thought. Tragic, that. Margo hopes they have a good union.

"In any case, this is a simple interrogation formula. It produces extremely uncomfortable effects when a suspect tries to lie. This, in turn, leads to two results. First, that your body will quickly dissuade you from lying, and second, that lies are easily noticeable based on body language, such that even an untrained interrogator can usually get a good read on the situation."

Lecture delivered, Torquemada proceeds to sit on the other side of the desk.

"Any questions?"

"How long do the effects last?" Margo asks, and at this point, something must be happening, because she is feeling oddly relaxed.

"An hour or two at most. That's usually more than enough time."

Margo nods, and is a bit dismayed to find herself giving Torquemada a friendly smile. Because really, the Spymaster is very helpful in explaining all this, and it's nice that she's taken the time…

She frowns. Uh-oh.

"Good. It looks like we can start any time. So, we will proceed as follows. I will ask you questions, and you will answer them. That's really all there is to it. And when we're done… Well. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Shall we?"

Margo nods again.

"What happened to your patrol?"

Well, that part, at least, is easy.

"They were killed."

She looks for a change in her general physical state, but there isn't one. Well, maybe a slight sense of accomplishment at a job well done.

"Indeed they were. Did you kill them?"

"No."

Same effects. She can do this.

"Good. Did you know they would get slaughtered?"

"No."

So far so good.

"Were they killed by the Qunari?"

"No."

She can totally do this.

"Do you know who?"

"Yes. Tevinter mages."

This seems to give Torquemada some food for thought, because she hesitates for a few moments, a slight frown on her face. While she's deliberating with herself, Margo finds that her hands have become very sensitive, and she's obsessively fiddling with a sharp metal snag that protrudes from one of her manacles. It's a twist in the metal that almost feels like the tip of a dull pair of scissors. Maybe someone tried to break free, and didn't quite manage the job, but mangled the manacles in the process. Right. Just like the Inquisition to use second-hand restraints.

Her hands are in her lap, and she hopes that Torquemada doesn't notice and immediately assume that she's picking a lock (as if she could), and not just neurotically fiddling with the cuffs.

"What were you doing when the patrol was attacked?"

Ah. And that's where the proverbial tires hit the road. Margo works against the compulsion to blurt out that she was boinking a guy in robes – and then supply some more helpful details, like the fact that the mage was quite attractive and very good at it, but not quite her type. Or that she's not entirely sure what to make of the fact that the only reason she knows this is because Solas had reconstructed the memory for her. And that the whole thing led to a pretty awkward thing between them that she's been trying not to consider too closely because she's pretty sure the experience wasn't altogether unpleasant for her, or for him either, despite the fact that it really should have been, and what does that mean, exactly? Or that, really, the only reason she's even had to do this is because I come in peace, take me to your leader, and that she really should have made use of the university's discount for getting a regular therapist appointment, but it's too late now…

She brings the runaway thought train to a screeching halt before it completely derails.

"I was occupied elsewhere" she says instead, and then is slammed with a sense of profound, soul-sucking failure.

Torquemada smiles, and there's really nothing friendly about it this time.

"So I gather. Doing what, precisely?"

And at that point, Margo realizes just how much shit she's in. At least she understands the mechanism now. It's a simple behaviorist principle: a biochemical reward for running off at the mouth, and a punishment for even so much as withholding irrelevant details. Let alone lying – she can't imagine the sort of psychological whiplash that outright lying would produce. And indeed, the interrogator doesn't have to lift a finger. Her own body is, once again, her worst enemy.

It really is becoming a bad habit.

"Having sex" she finally says. Because, really, that's better than the expanded alternative.

Torquemada raises a quizzical eyebrow.

"Ah. And who with, pray tell?"

Swallowing another nascent tirade on the technical ambiguities required to provide an accurate answer to this question, Margo limits her answer to "A mage." And actually gets a nice warm and fuzzy reward, apparently quite visible on her face, if Torquemada's surprised expression is anything to go by. If she really wanted to make the most of this, she'd have to say "two mages" as the most formally accurate response. Though that might give Torquemada the wrong sort of idea…

"Interesting." The Spymaster interlaces her fingers, but there is something speculative about her gaze. As if this was not precisely what she had expected. Or rather, as if she did not expect Margo to fess up quite so easily. Well, sorry to disappoint…

"A Tevinter mage, by chance?"

"Yes." No reward or punishment for that one.

Torquemada considers this newly acquired information.

"That you will admit this with such ease tells me one of two things. You are rightfully blaming yourself for your unforgivable dalliance with an enemy, and are in fact looking for situations that would most effectively end you. This is consistent with you defying orders, and participating in the battle at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. And with your reckless behavior there, which, I should remind you, I witnessed first-hand. If this is the case, I assure you I will oblige your desire to die at the end of this conversation."

Margo swallows against bile rising in her throat.

Torquemada pauses, steeples her fingers, and props her chin on top of them - an incongruously casual gesture. "Alternatively, you are notembarrassed by this at all. If so, then the only possible explanation is that you were using sex to try to gain an advantage – perhaps looking to gather information on the Tevinter presence on the Coast. This, of course, would be mostly in the interest of the Qunari, which brings me to my next question. Were you spying on Tevinter?"

Margo looks at Torquemada, and all she can see, once again, is a grinning skull. This is it, then. The end of the road. If she says yes, she'll get slammed with negative biochemical feedback, because lets face it, Maile was not spying on anyone. She just... really had a thing for this particular robed fuckwit. So it will be a lie, and the Spymaster will know.

And if she says no, then she is done.

In a split second decision, Margo jams the sharp protrusion from her manacle into the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, hoping that she can hit the pressure point without looking.

The pain is blinding. Her skin explodes in goosebumps, and tears spring to her eyes.

"No" she says through the pain, and not even the inbuilt reward mechanism of the truth serum can override her body's shocked reaction.

Torquemada's eyebrows shoot up.

"I see" she says and length. "So. Spying on Tevinter, but not in an official capacity. Certainly not at our behest, anyway. Are you with the Ben Hassrath?"

What happens if she says no when she doesn't know the answer? When, in fact, she does not understand the question? Would her body interpret the statement as a lie?

"Yes" she says, and is crushed by a wave of bleak hopelessness. So, yes. For all intents and purposes, a failure to respond accurately is always classified as a lie.

At this point Torquemada is looking genuinely confused. And then, some cog clicks into place, because the Spymaster actually beams at her.

"Of course. Of course, I should have thought of this sooner. Charter has always had a … soft spot for some of her girls. Perhaps you did not reciprocate and she sent you on a little vigilante mission above your paygrade and skill. Or maybe you did reciprocate, and she promoted you before you were ready. I've long wondered about some of her decisions… but this does put things in a new light. And the Tevinter mage, presumably, beat you to the punch, as it were."

Torquemada stands up, and starts pacing.

"Which can happen to the best of us, in this game. Much of this is luck and timing." For a flicker of a second the Spymaster almost looks like a reasonable person. It doesn't last long. "And of course, your reticence to come forward… yes. Whatever happened between you and Charter, you must still be loyal to her. This is the woman who trained you. Your loyalty to her would precede any loyalty you might have for the Inquisition…

Vassal of my vassal is not my vassal. Thank you, medieval code of honor.

Of course, this will still likely end in her throat being slit. Margo wishes she'd had the time to give Evie that pep talk. And have a beer with Varric. And learn how to process Lyrium. And... Yes, alright. The elf. She's not sure what she wants to do with him, exactly, but being out of time precludes the possibility of ever answering that question.

In the meantime, Torquemada seems to come to a decision.

"One more question, Agent. Do you feel responsible for the death of your patrol?"

Oh, Unspecified Creator Deighty's Hairy Scrotum, is that a trick question?

"Yes" she says. And it's not a lie. Maile did feel responsible. Just for a different set of reasons. And she, Margo, feels bad for them. And bad for taking over Maile's body as the woman launched herself on a suicide mission. And kind of bad for having survived in her stead.

Her body doesn't react.

This, apparently, seems to satisfy the Spymaster.

"Under typical circumstances, I would not let this slide, Agent. But you have potential, and these are not typical circumstances." She fixes her with her cool gaze. "You're an elf. It couldn't have been easy to let a Tevinter have his way with you on the slim hope that this might lend a strategic advantage. Not if we consider the history of your two people. No matter what they say, this part of the Game does not come easily for a woman. It takes true steel." And at that moment, whatever's in the Spymaster's expression actually makes her look more human to Margo than she's ever seemed.

Does this mean she is not going to get killed in some dank crypt?

"Very well. You will immediately cease all contacts with Charter, and you will have to pledge an oath of loyalty to me, directly. Or better yet, to the Inquisition. Do not think that I will hesitate to eliminate you at the first sign of a misstep. Do you understand me?"

Margo nods, though she really isn't sure what she's nodding to at this point.

"We will do this right now."

The Spymaster stands, and approaches Margo's chair.

And then, her hands are free of manacles.

"Repeat after me."

And so, she repeats the oath that the Spymaster enunciates to her, entirely unable to understand, let alone process its words.

"You are free to go, Agent. Report to Cullen for your next assignment for the time being." And as Margo stands up, on completely rubbery legs, and makes her way towards the stairs, Torquemada calls after her.

"I might make use of your particular talents and willingness to employ them at a later date. No sense in wasting potential that is already there."

Oh yay, Margo thinks to herself. This just keeps getting better.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by vervain (or verbena), classically used against insomnia, anxiety, women health issues, and as a liver tonic. In other words, pretty much exactly what poor Margo needs.

A quick meta note: I am porting this story from AO3, in order to have it consolidated in a single place. AO3 screwed up and orphaned it by accident, which means I had to split it, and I wanted to have it somewhere where it's not divided up. I'm also taking the opportunity to edit it. So, if you like what you're reading, you can either wait for it to unfold here, and I'll be posting on a tight schedule until all the chapters are uploaded, but you can also go an read it on AO3 if you prefer. Here are the links:

Part 1: /works/11778627/chapters/26557722

Part 2: /works/13673376/chapters/31408995

Coming up: Pointless conflicts, sanctimonious Chantry Mothers, and a weird bearded dude training farmers for a peasant uprising.


	10. Chapter 10: The Path Less Traveled

By the time Margo finds Commander Cullen, Haven feels vacant. She estimates that about a third of the troops are missing. She passes by the Apothecary on her way down to the training grounds – which are depopulated too – and is therefore forced to walk by Solas's hut. The door is closed, and from what she can tell, locked. She still knocks, on impulse. There is no answer.

The tavern is deserted too. The only patrons are a bard, who isn't even pretending to sing, and a couple of older soldiers who look like they've just settled in for a long game of cards. Margo riffles through her pocket, and produces some copper. Flissa – as the barmaid is apparently called – sets her up with some meaty porridge and light ale.

Pragmatics out of the way, Margo makes her way towards the tents, and sure enough, there is Commander Cullen and Adan, sitting on a pair of upturned barrels next to a particularly badly damaged log dummy. Margo walks towards them, stuffing her hands deep into her pockets. Will this fucking cold never end?

"Reporting for duty" she announces brightly. And if the delivery is meant to be at least a little tongue-in-cheek, she is genuinely pleased to get two toothy grins, complete with vigorous claps on the back and a "you did it" sort of reception from both the alchemist and the military man.

"Glad to have you with us, Agent." That's Cullen, and if he had any doubt that she would make it out of her little interview with Torquemada in one piece, he doesn't let on.

"You can just call me Margo" she says, hoping that her name is not too strange by Thedas standards.

"Margo" he smiles. "Then please, call me Cullen."

She nods. She has to constantly catch herself, because he does look so much like Jake. She has another pang of anxiety at the thought. Her little brother didn't deserve this shit either. Mourn the death – or, minimally, the disappearance - of another loved one. But Jake has always had a strangely cavalier attitude about these things. Even when baba passed, he had been… What had he said? "There are other worlds than these, Margo." It had sounded like some sort of bullshit New Age dictum at the time.

"You ready to get some work done, Apprentice?" Adan is still grinning. "Your patrol is leaving tomorrow morning."

"Hold your horses, Master Adan. We can't neglect her battle skills. I'm not sending out another underprepared operative." He looks up at her, a bit sheepishly. "No offense, Agent. Uh… Margo."

Margo returns the smile.

"None taken. If Master Adan can spare me for a couple of hours, a refresher course sounds good."

After that, she's sent off to Master Harritt for a proper set of armor. The blacksmith sizes her up with a quick critical look, and goes off to rummage in the back of the forge for some ready-made pieces. Really, she shouldn't feel so damn giddy at the results, but the armor is amazing. It is lightweight, but sturdy, fits her comfortably, and the leather has a kind of soft creamy consistency that makes you want to sort of… pet it. "Nugskin" Harritt explains, nodding at his handiwork with obvious approval. "Too light for most of our frontline troops, but I always keep some spares on hand for you sneaky, stabby types."

Then, it's off to find the Commander again, and before she knows it, he has her running through various drills. He turns out to be a patient teacher, which is a good thing, too, because she is a pretty obtuse pupil.

"You're overthinking it" he finally breaths out, both of them a bit winded, and by now covered in a freezing snowy slush. She gets the footwork right off, but when it comes to attacking, especially with the daggers, she freezes and pulls her punches. She relies on her body to guide her through the steps – and while she gets the whole avoid opponent at all costs part, the rest of the "sneaky, stabby" stuff is an uphill battle. Poor Cullen spends more time chasing her around the rink than engaging in actual sparring.

"It'll come back to you with practice. The movements are all there. But…"

He seems to hesitate, and Margo decides that he's looking for a way to phrase his criticism constructively. Glass half full kind of guy, that one.

"You might try your hand at ranged weapons. I have a feeling you'll find that… easier for now. Have you had much practice with a bow?"

"You aim and pull the string, right?"

He chuckles.

"That's the gist of it. How's your throwing hand?"

Hell if she knows. So they try that next, and as it turns out, she can lobe things pretty damn well – courtesy of long summers spent playing vegetable wars with the village kids, stealing the neighbors' tomatoes and other projectile-ready produce, and winters where every school day would be followed by a merciless snowball fight to the death, or, at least, to first tears. As long as there's a degree of separation from her and her target, the in-built "do no harm" mechanism doesn't seem to kick in.

"How do you feel about grenades?" Cullen asks, cleaning another snowball out of his hair.

"What's not to love about grenades?" Of course, by this point, Margo's grinning deviously. Cullen gives her – and the quickly solidifying snowball she's packing in her hands - a slightly worried look.

"Master Adan will get you started on a basic set."

She spends the afternoon in the apothecary, preparing small, sturdy flasks of something flammable. Adan is so pleased with this new turn of events – and with the opportunity to produce things that will blow up on impact – that he's practically dancing around. The light outside wanes, and they ignite the oil lamps to get enough illumination for their work.

"Alright, Apprentice. This is where the fun and games end. You need to learn how to work with lyrium. You'll be taking magica potions with you to the Hinterlands tomorrow."

Margo looks at him with interest – because even when he was working with the highly volatile oil-like stuff they've been using for grenades, none of the awed reverence was there.

"So, what is it, exactly? A mineral? An oil?"

Adan simply shakes his head.

"It's what makes the world go 'round, fledgling."

He tells her about Lyrium mining then, and about the ways in which dwarves have been processing it for centuries. About the substance's addictiveness and detrimental long-term effects. From what she can glean, it's both a mineral and more than a mineral. In the parameters of her own world, it's petroleum and morphine and panacea all rolled into one. A truly classical example of Plato's pharmacon – at once poison and remedy, boon and sacrifice.

Adan tells her about the way the Chantry controls the Lyrium trade, and Margo is finding herself nodding vigorously when she realizes that this is their way of keeping Templars – who are, from what she can understand, the local religious organization's military arm – on a short leash. And she learns about the Circles, and how mages are branded with the stuff if they step out of line. It is as if this substance is the lynchpin of this entire world, the heartbeat at the center of its many complicated arrangements.

So by the time they are donning gloves and tying on face masks, she has developed a healthy reverence for the stuff. And so, even if the potion making itself is actually rather simple – take granulated processed Lyrium (which, to Margo, looks a whole lot like blue Miracle-Gro water crystals), heat them in a hermetic cast-iron capsule, and then dunk the whole thing into an ice bucket to break the crystalline structure, then mix into an infusion of what else but Elfroot and Some Fungus – she still feels like she's just learned one of Alchemy's greatest secrets. Like, say, making mercury ash.

"We don't calcinate ourselves, I guess?" Margo asks, once they have a neat little row of potions aligned on a shelf specially freed up for the purposes. At this point, several hours of work into it, they are both sweaty, sooty, and cranky.

"Makers' Breath, no! Even not all dwarves are able to process this stuff. Did you miss the highly addictive will drive you mad part?"

It'd be interesting to follow the commodity chain, though, and Margo finds herself daydreaming about mapping Lyrium trade against the history of Thedas's political conflicts.

After everything is done, Adan sends her to the back of the temple, where a make-shift bath house has been set up to keep Haven's populace from complete filthiness.

"Make sure you scrub. The particles get everywhere. You don't want that stuff to absorb" he cautions her.

He doesn't have to tell her twice.

She makes her way up the hill. The feeling of emptiness is eerie – Haven seems like a ghost town, or some kind of remote monastic outpost for particularly misanthropic ascetics. By the time she makes it to the bath house – a simple, but surprisingly clean and well-heated sauna with one steam room, another one with large wooden vats that she supposes are bathtubs, and a common area for washing and mending clothes, the camp is almost still.

The bath house, though, turns out to be inhabited. She surmises that this is the women's shift. There are six or seven women in there already, with one or two familiar faces. Margo collects a threadbare towel from a grumpy elf who charges her two coppers for it, sets herself up on a bench, and begins to peel off her clothes. None of the women seem to be particularly shy about nudity, so Margo shrugs, and does as in Rome. She opts for the sauna – bucket of water option instead of the questionably clean bathtubs. The place smells strongly of pine, wood smoke, and caustic lye soap.

It turns out that she has a companion in the sauna space. The other woman is short – Varric-short, as in Homo Dwarvicus of some kind – with an elaborate hairdo that she is trying to pry apart.

When she looks up at Margo, the dwarven woman's face breaks into a grin.

"Hey! You actually really made it!"

Oh great. __Now__ someone recognizes her.

"I only sort of did" Margo offers tentatively. "I got pretty severely contused and…"

"I know, I know. Memory loss, they've told us. I'm Lace Harding, in case you forgot. I started up with Charter pretty recently – well, I suppose that we officially came in at the same time once Charter signed up with the Inquisition, but you've obviously been with her for much longer than I. You might not remember, but you took me in during the first few weeks. Showed me the ropes. Told me whom to watch out for – which I really appreciate." Hair finally managed, she takes a chunk of soap and a small bucket, and begins to scrub herself with enthusiasm.

Margo decides to follow her example.

"I'm sorry about your patrol. There's been some weird… rumor about what happened, but I'm personally glad you made it out alive."

Great. Because Margo's life was not sufficiently complicated without "weird rumors." Instead she nods, and smiles through the stinging soap.

"Thank you. You're not out scouting with Charter?"

Does she remember this right? Charter is supposed to be gone for two weeks, doing whatever it is that Charter does.

"Nope. I'm better suited to the Hinterlands, since I grew up there. In fact, I just came in for the day to collect you, after we got the Herald all set up and on her way. You and I head out tomorrow bright and early. I'm glad you were on the roster. We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time around."

Margo turns to her, while trying to get soap out of her hair. It's the first time she's had her host's – well, ok, maybe she can start thinking of it as her hair by this point - unbraided, and damn it's long and unmangeable. Next time she comes across a pair of scissors…

"What do you mean" she asks, trying to rake the tangles out with her fingers.

"Well, I don't mind the twins, and Jon's alright when he's not trying to climb in your breeches – which, come to think of it, is most of the time - but Marek and Dylant are…"

Margo makes a face. That must be Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

"Chauvinistic nug-humping dipbags?" Margo offers, paraphrasing Varric.

Scout Harding laughs.

"Couldn't have put it better myself."

She listens as Harding describes the situation in the Hinterlands, and the more Margo hears about it, the more the whole thing sounds like the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. Not necessarily their mission, which is, relatively speaking, a fairly straight forward one. Go find some herbs. Stuff herbs in sack. Send crow to Cullen with location of whatever herbs you didn't have room for. Set up camp site. Make some potions.

It's the part where Evie and the others have to cut their way through an active war zone to get to this clergy woman - whose name is apparently Mother Giselle – and who may or may not agree to come along, or even help.

Body clean, small clothes washed and dried, and hair more or less detangled and re-braided (into a much less complicated arrangement), Margo makes her way back to the Apothecary. There's another plate of food for her – apparently, Master Adan has noticed her tendency to skip meals, and has taken it upon himself to not let his wayward pupil starve to death. After she's done with the meal, she chews on a piece of astringent bark – hopefully not toxic – in an effort to clean her teeth.

She doesn't, in fact, remember falling asleep. And once again, no dreams trouble her.

They set out the next morning. Jan and the Tweedles, and the Twins, who turn out to be two very scarred, very scary wardrobe-sized blokes with a Scottish brogue so thick you could slather it on toast. They are, apparently, from a place called Feredlen.

The Twins, Margo decides, are the best thing since sliced bread. As Tweedledum starts on his misogynist speciest needling sometime by mid-morning, one of the two men – either Sheldon or Shelby, she's not sure which is which – emits a long string of ear-curling obscenities about the moral character of Tweedle's mother, and then proceeds to sock him in the ear with a cannonball-sized fist. As it turns out, the Twins were adopted by a dwarven couple, and their nurse-maid was an elven woman. After that, there are no more commentaries about ears, asses, tits, or any specific species' willingness to do it for three coppers and a bowl of soup.

As they travel down the mountain and along the valley, the climate changes radically, and by evening they are all sweaty and peeling off as many layers as is safe. They do not run into much trouble on the way – which surprises Margo quite a bit, based on Harding's stories – but the scout mentions that the detour allows them to skirt most of the dangerous areas. Still, Margo can hear the echoes of some kind of skirmish in the distance, faint, but definitely there.

They stop for the night next to a wide lake, the evening breeze blowing pleasantly cool air off the water. Margo wanders around for a while along the pebbly shore, and discovers that the place is overgrown with reeds, also known as Blood Lotus. Since the Tweedles are managing the campfire, the Twins are setting up tents, and Harding is off to hunt for dinner, she decides to recruit Jan for some herb collection. He follows along happily enough.

"So" he trails, sometimes after the third burlap sack is filled with Blood Lotus. "You have anyone to warm your bedroll at night?"

Yep. One-track mind, that one.

Margo tells him to fuck off, but amiably enough that he just laughs.

"Let me know when you change your mind."

"You'll be the first to know" she grumbles, and then they both freeze, because as they come out from behind a bend in the shore, there is movement in the small ravine ahead. Jan docks behind a boulder, and Margo follows him, with a brief lag. What the hell is that thing? For a second, she could have sworn she saw a kind of orange, glowing goat.

As it turns out, it's a couple of unaccommodating looking fellas with bows and very anonymizing head-gear. The kind of head-gear you'd want to use if you would rather that the travelers you're robbing not identify you in a line-up later.

She is about to ask Jan whether they should sneak back to get reinforcements, when a commotion draws their attention, and they both peek out from behind their shelter to get a better look.

There's a small group of men – or, boys, really – suddenly bursting out from behind a lake fjord, and charging at the two presumed brigands with screams that are probably meant to be awe-inspiring, but come off as rather the opposite. But that's not what has Margo gawking. They are led by what appears to be a very heavily armored bear. Except said bear is also brandishing a sword and a shield, and is moving in a distinctly non-bear like fashion.

The boys mostly provide vocal accompaniment, but the bear is all business. He knocks one of the archers off his feet with one shield strike, before the poor sod gets a chance to so much as draw his bow, let alone fire, and, pivoting around with a speed that defies the basic laws of physics, lops the head of the other one – now charging at him with a dagger – clean off his shoulders. Then he turns around again – all part of the same fluid movement – and plants his sword in the supine shape of brigand number one. As he does, his armor catches the waning evening light, and Margo notices a strange design on his breastplate – something with wings, she thinks.

"Andraste's Knickers, that's a Grey Warden" Jon whispers next to her. By his tone, he might as well have said "Purple Unicorn."

Margo squints against the glare of the setting sun, trying to see what this apparently mythical creature looks like. Maybe Grey Wardens are some kind of werewolf species? But… no. From this angle, the bloke looks human enough. It's just that he has truly spectacular facial hair. And, based on his size, he might even give the Twins a run for their money.

Carnage all done with, he trails back to the group of boys, who are chittering excitedly at each other. She can't hear what he's trying to impart on his small flock of followers, but she suspects it's some kind of pep talk. And then, before they can really do anything about it, he gathers his things, and begins walking away, towards the hills.

Margo shoots Jan a quick look.

"What do you figure he's doing" she asks, because, really, unless this is some kind of performance art…

Jan shrugs.

"He might be recruiting, I guess. One way or another, Harding needs to know at once. We'll need to send a raven to headquarters."

So they trail back to the camp – burlap sacks in tow – and by then, Scout Harding has returned, and is gutting something that looks like a goat, or a ram.

"A Grey Warden, are you sure" she asks - at least twice - after they relay their story. "Leliana will want to know right away." And then, the small woman whistles and a bonafide raven – except with some kind of reddish plumage around its throat – alights on her outstretched hand.

Dinner finished, the Twins and the Tweedles start a game of cards – something called Wicked Grace, which, from what Margo can surmise, is just good old poker – and she decides to beg off.

"Want some company?" Jan tries again, hopefully.

"No."

"Ah, well. Another time."

She's asleep almost as soon as she hits her bedroll.

When she opens her eyes, Margo realizes immediately that she is dreaming. The chartreuse quality of the light reminds her too much of that first night with Brother Rufus's thrice-bedamned manuscript. But the landscape is not the non-Euclidian mind-bending horror of her trans-universal travel, but something much more familiar. A soft, fragrant, quiet field of tall summer grasses, speckled with bright splashes of color – poppies and knapweed, yarrow and chamomile…

She turns around, and there, next to her, is her baba, digging up an early-purple orchid with a neat little rake, and gently cleaning the clumps of earth from the bulb.

"Ah, my soul, you have finally come" baba comments without lifting her head from her work.

Margo doesn't dare to move, lest the vision disappears. She extends her hand tentatively, and puts it on baba's forearm. It's solid. And then tears are welling up in her eyes, and she throws her arms around the old woman and nestles up into her embrace with a relieved hiccuppy kind of sob.

"Shh, child. Do not fret. There's no helping what's done."

They sit like that for a few moments, and baba is gently brushing her hair with her earth-covered fingers.

"Baba, I think I got lost" Margo finally manages.

Her grandmother turns, her slate grey eyes mild.

"You can't find yourself without getting a little lost on the way, heart."

The old woman's face crinkles into a sad smile.

"But you're not here for your old baba, are you my little thistle? You're here for the wolfling."

Margo frowns, but in the logic of the dream, baba's words are nonsensical, and yet she can feel the truth of them down to her very bones.

"I don't understand" she pleads.

Baba chuckles, a little wistfully.

"All the other children, they always wanted the treats. The juicy currents, and the sweet frost apples, and the candied cloudberries. But you, I could never keep you away from the bitter roots." She laughs softly, entertained by the memory. "There you'd sit, gnawing at the darn things – heavens know where you'd even find them - your little face all puckered up with the taste of it, but you'd just keep at it!"

The old woman's expression turns serious, and she tucks a stray salt and pepper lock under her kerchief.

"Fate's not a dog, child, you can't chase it away with a stick." And there is steel in baba's voice, just as she remembers it. Baba rarely scolded, but never coddled.

"Baba, help me find my way. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Wish that I could, my soul." The old woman gets up, tucks the bulb into a pocket, and brushes twigs and leaves off her apron. "If you want to see him, you better go soon. There's not much time left."

And with that, baba scoops her into a last hug, plants a kiss on Margo's forehead – licorice and lemon balm and home as nothing else will ever be - and vanishes into thin air.

Margo looks around, trying, and failing, to keep the tears at bay. She begins to walk down the field's gentle slope, and as she does, the grass seems to dry out and fade away, and soon she is walking through a thin dusting of snow. The air turns dry and bitter cold, and before long, she is shivering.

There is a copse of short craggy trees, gnarled with the elements, and she trudges towards it, sort of hoping at this point that she would wake up already, because she doesn't need to also dream of cold when there's plenty of that when she's awake too.

She turns her head, and startles. Next to her, there's the elf.

"Is this your dream?" she asks. "Or mine?"

"Hard to say." He looks at the sky, a small smile on his face, and then turns his gaze towards her. "Somewhere half-way, I think. I am glad you found your way here. And that you are in one piece!"

"Are you alright? The four of you?" She tries to keep her voice neutral, but doesn't manage.

His expression turns troubled.

"We are alive, for now. Though for how long, I cannot say."

"Did you run into trouble?" Not that she could swoop in to the rescue. It's not like she can fight.

"It is more that trouble seems to keep running into us." He looks at the sky again, and his forehead creases into a frown. "I must go soon."

She stops, then, and briefly brushes her fingers against the sleeve of his forearm.

"Solas, wait. I need to ask you something."

Another smile, and there is really something so gentle about him here, as if all the hard edges and brittleness is smoothed over by the dreamworld's soft currents.

How does she do this? But it seems important that she know.

"I passed my Alchemy…ah… entrance exams. But…"

The elf's smile widens – and, of course, the warm fuzzies don't miss their opportunity to strike - but then his expression turns quizzical. Well, as far as she's concerned, warm fuzzies beat incoherent lust any day. She'll take it.

"What troubles you, Lethallan?"

No point in beating about the bush, right? Better just rip the band-aid right off.

"Enchanter Minaeve and Master Adan had me make a particular formula. Its effects, while not lethal, were, for lack of a better word, odd." She exhales, finding words to continue. "It created a very localized sort of hallucination that seemed… incredibly real. Are you familiar with anything like that?"

Solas looks at her thoughtfully. But Margo also realizes that there is no sparkle of recognition, or humor, or playfulness to his response. Polite, even warm, interest, yes. But nothing that would suggest that he would know what she is talking about.

Her blood turns to ice.

"I imagine that any number of draughts would be able to create illusions of some sort, especially if they work to thin the veil between the Fade and the waking world. What was specific about this one?"

She should tell him. If she's going to ask him for advice, then really, she should just bite the bullet and stop acting like a teenager with a crush. They're all adults here, right? She's too old for this shit. And really, so is he.

"It… manifested someone…hmm…familiar. Except their behavior was…" Oh she's such a chicken. "A bit off. Plausible, perhaps, but not entirely."

Solas peers at her, as if trying to figure out what's hiding behind the words.

"This figure from your vision, what did it do?"

Margo squirms under the elf's gaze.

"Well. The draught…" Oh, to hell with it, she's being a child about this. "Look, the draught is an aphrodisiac." She watches his eyes widen. She's actually a little bit disappointed that elven ears don't reflect emotional states. She keeps expecting them to do a kind of Yoda number when they go up in surprise or excitement. "So, as you can imagine, while it's in full swing, you end up with a rather one-track mind. That's really what makes it so challenging, it's hard to do any work when you're…" she trails off. Her cheeks are burning hot.

"Ah." He pauses, and his expression is… impish. "I can certainly see how this could interfere with one's focus. And, may I ask who the familiar figure in your vision was?"

Well, wouldn't you like to know. She narrows her eyes at him.

"Not important at the moment" she answers a little tersely. "The important thing is that I'm trying to work out if it was only a hallucination, or something else."

"That you would think to ask this suggests that this is someone you are reasonably certain you might encounter in the Fade." Oh, and he sounds so carefully neutral about it, too. "Out of curiosity, what was the formula called?"

Margo shrugs.

"Something like Ishmael's Bargain, if I recall correctly."

Solas freezes, his face suddenly dead serious.

"Imshael's Bargain? Are you certain?"

Ishmael, Imshael... Margo frowns. Whatever he is worried about, she doubts it's the environmental consequences of whaling. This is going to be more bad news, isn't it?

The elf's hands suddenly come up, fingers curling in an almost painful grip around her arms, and he pivots her to face him. She finds herself tangled up in his gaze.

"Margo." Her name on his lips sends a jolt down her spine. It's… like an alchemist, tasting an unfamiliar plant for its properties. "Please. You must listen. Did this … vision, did it endeavor to tempt you in any way? Offer a favor? A boon?"

She shakes her head, suddenly numb.

"Not quite. I suppose it offered… help. I turned it down."

"And it did not insist?" he presses.

"It didn't force itself on me, if that's what you're asking."

Solas's grip on her relaxes, and then, a second of hesitation, and his hands come up to cup her face. He tilts her head up, his eyes searching for some kind of answer, though Margo at this points feels a little iffy about what the whole conversation was about in the first place.

"Who was in the vision, da'nas? You must tell me. I cannot help you if I do not know for sure what shape the Forbidden One took for you."

The Forbidden One? What in the ever loving fuck is a Forbidden One? With a name like that, nothing good, no doubt.

"You" she finally says.

At that, the elf pulls back from her as if scalded. He turns around and paces, eyebrows drawn in simmering anger.

"How can these imbeciles not have thought this through? Children, playing with forces they cannot begin to comprehend… Whose idea was it, this draught?"

Margo takes hold of his forearm, and forces him to a stop. His random oscillations are making her a little dizzy, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the dream in place and prevent it from sort of… drifting away, like a soap bubble.

"For what it's worth, I don't think they were intentionally malicious. It sounded like it's not an uncommon draught to use as a test."

Solas is practically vibrating with irritation.

"If so, then it is selected solely for the perverse amusement of the examiner, and with no consideration for potential consequences."

He is about to start pacing again, so Margo grips his arm more firmly.

"Solas, hold on. This Forbidden One… Varric told me about something called desire demons. Is that the same category of thing?"

The elf nods.

"Yes. That is one name for them. Imshael is a very ancient one of its kind."

"But shouldn't it count for something that, in the end, nothing happened? I didn't turn into a drooling husk, or anything."

"That they would trifle with such a thing is offense enough!" Again, that hot flash of anger. "It was pure luck that the demon miscalculated, and took the wrong shape."

If Margo didn't know any better, she'd have to say he sounds just a pinch… ambivalent about that.

"It…" She looks at him a bit more carefully then. There's still that worried crease between his eyebrows, but there's something else there, too, something almost wistful, and yet resigned, and the combination makes him look… vulnerable. She's pretty sure that in the waking world, it would have been buried under layers of careful shields.

She looks at her feet, then, because at that moment, she can't quite bring herself to meet his gaze. "I wouldn't say it miscalculated in that sense. It made an… educated guess."

She takes a quick look. His eyebrows are raised in surprise, and then there's a dusting of color on his cheeks. But he's still looking pretty thunderous about the whole thing.

"Then perhaps it misjudged you, which is... Somewhat reassuring. But we cannot exclude the possibility that it will try again."

Margo frowns.

"Even if I stay away from any similar formulas?"

"You cannot avoid sleeping. Your body and your spirit are mismatched. They make the veil grow thin, and thus attract attention. And your spirit … stands out. You are quite easy to locate in the Fade – I did not have to look for long before I came upon you. It means that others can as well."

So he has been looking for her? Ah.

"Then help me train to control this better. You still have my memories. Perhaps by integrating them, I can… reattach to this body more firmly. Become less noticeable."

He nods.

"Yes. Yes, we must do this as soon as we can." He seems to hesitate, and then his expression hardens. "Lethallan, this thing between us, whatever its nature, it is proving… dangerous. I would not…" And Margo braces herself for what is likely going to come next, except that Solas suddenly looks off into the distance, and then his face contorts with pain.

"There is no time. Come find us if you can."

Margo wakes up with a gasp, the contours of his face, distorted by pain, like a retina burn on the back of her eyelids.


	11. Chapter 11: Singularity

It takes Margo a few seconds to shake off the sluggishness of sleep, and then she is crawling from under the tent's cover in the grip of a kind of generalized, unfocused panic. It's not dawn yet, but it's getting close – the unfamiliar stars have paled, and she can see a narrow band of fuchsia on the horizon.

Her bandmates are all asleep except for Marek, who's on guard duty.

"Finally, you're up. Lazy fucking elves" he greets her. Of course, it couldn't have been Harding, or the Twins, or even Jan. It just had to be one of the Tweedles.

She still can at least try…

"Listen, I think the Herald needs assistance. We need to try to find them."

The soldier stares at her, and then makes the trans-universal gesture for "crazy."

"Did you hit your head again while no one was looking? First, how in the Void would you know that – you've been out like a log for the last six hours. And second, we don't have a clue where they are."

Margo looks at him in helpless frustration. And really, how the hell is she supposed to convince this colossal asshat - who is already not predisposed to take anything she might have to say seriously based on what are clearly deeply held ideological convictions about both elves and women – when all she's got to go on is a dream. As much as she hates to admit this, the dipbag is right - she doesn't have the slightest idea about where Evie and the others might be.

"Anyway, since you're up, make yourself useful and take over. I'm going to get some shut-eye" Marek announces in the meantime, and proceeds towards one of the tents. She can hear the thunderous snoring of the twins emanating from the one next to it – Marek, wisely, doesn't select that one.

At this point, Margo is frenetic with the need to do something. Anything. Anything but this stupid, helpless wasting of time.

She gives up on Marek, crawls back into her own tent, and locates Harding's sleeping shape in the gloom. She's about the shake the dwarven woman awake, but before she can even reach for her, Harding is sitting up - a dagger in her hand, and an iron grip on Margo's wrist.

"I think the Herald is in trouble" Margo says, ignoring both dagger and the scout's hold on her. "Pardon the rude awakening" she adds, and hopes that Lace Harding is, in fact, awake, and not running through a somnambulist script that will end with Margo missing fingers.

"When did the crow come in?" the scout asks, and, to Margo's relief, the voice sounds wide awake. It takes her a second to realize that Harding is assuming that the news has been obtained through the local avian delivery service.

Margo doesn't see much choice but to exploit whatever goodwill Maile had managed to build up with the dwarf.

"It didn't" she says. "I saw it in the Fade." And at that point, she's really hoping that Varric is right, and that all things Fade are outside of dwarves' jurisdiction or propensity to debate.

Harding, bless her, takes this questionable announcement as a given, and simply nods and starts pulling her boots on.

"Did you get a sense of their location?" she asks, businesslike.

"Not really." Another wave of helpless frustration. How the hell are they supposed to look for them, when she has no idea – not even an inkling – of where they might be. For all she knows, the Hinterlands might be the size of some small European country. Her understanding of the scale of Thedas is rudimentary verging on nonexistent.

She closes her eyes, trying to recall the details of the dream. There was that copse of scraggly looking trees – but how many scraggly trees there might be in these mountains?

And then, it hits her. Solas kept looking at the sky – she didn't even question what he was focusing on when he did, but the answer should be pretty obvious, because she does remember the greenish glow on his face. And what's big, ugly, green, and swirls like shit down a toilet? She hasn't spotted Hellmouth from their location yet – because, of course, they are much further away from the Temple of Sacred Ashes – but from some angles, it should still be visible.

She follows the scout out of the tent, thinking frantically.

"Lace, are there many places around here that you can see the Breach from?" she asks, hoping against hope that the answer will be a handy 'oh, really, just that one specific spot at XY coordinates.'

She should be so lucky.

Harding thinks for a few seconds.

"You can't see much from this side of the range, the mountains are in the way. Did you see anything else? Any markers that might help me identify where they might be?"

A field and a copse of trees isn't much to go by… At this point, Margo is practically howling with frustrated desperation and forced idleness, but she pushes down the instinct to simply start running in a random direction.

"There were distinct craggy trees there – I remember thinking how weather-beaten they looked. And… a greenish glow from above. That's why I thought this might be somewhere where the Breach is visible."

Harding shakes her head, absorbed in some kind of invisible topographic calculation.

"Not necessarily. It could be the glow of a rift. In fact, that's a lot more likely. Trouble is, there are more than one. We've located a few in this area, and there is one right between here and the refugee camp, where the Herald would have been headed. If they decided to cut across, as the bird flies…"

The scout nods.

"I don't remember whether there are any craggy trees there, but there is an old ruin. If they came upon it at night from the valley, and decided to camp nearby, it is possible they wouldn't have noticed the rift on the other side."

Margo exhales through her teeth, feeling every bit like an overheated pressure cooker with a broken valve. This is such a stretch. Even Harding must know this is a fairly flimsy guesstimate, but what can they do, really? It's that, or simply shrugging it off. Or running in some random direction, hoping that somehow the universe's benevolence will lead them to the right place.

Unlikely, that. Especially the benevolence part.

In the meantime, the scout seems to come to a decision.

"I don't want to leave the camp abandoned, in case they actually manage to make it up here, and need some help. I say we leave the twins and the other two, take Jan, and go take a look at that rift."

Margo is already nodding, and rushing off to wake up the soldier. Jan blinks sleep out of his eyes with an over-friendly little grin, but before he can try to proposition her again, Harding barks out the new orders in a tone of voice that brooks no argument, lest there be consequences. And, however much of a letch, Jan is on his feet, armed, and ready much quicker than Margo's able to get her grenade belt and daggers. She stuffs as many ampules as she can –health and magica tonics - into the leather satchel on the side of her belt, and then breaks into a run after the retreating figures of her two companions.

She doesn't really remember how long it takes them to get in view of the green, shimmering thing hanging in mid-air at the foot of a broken bridge. They run the whole time, though Harding eventually makes a gesture with her fist, and slows them down to a swift, but quiet jog, favoring stealth over speed. Margo can see the green glow before they come upon its source – the rift, as Harding called it. It looks like someone dropped a giant, fluorescent green egg-yolk into a pot of cold water. The thing – and there is something so fundamentally, viscerally wrong and disgusting about it – is pulsing and changing shape, like some unfathomable life form.

And it's ringed by demons. Or what Margo assumes are demons, because they are certainly not any kind of human creatures that she can identify. There are phosphorescent ghost-like formations – vaguely human-shaped, but only as the most general approximation – positioned in a circle around the hell-yolk thing. Their soft puke-green glow illuminates the other denizens, and Margo's brain strains to make sense of what she's seeing. "What the fuck is that?" she squeaks, before she can catch herself. Jan, next to her, cuts her a quick look, and then points his chin towards the creatures her eyes are fixated on. "Shades" he supplies. Margo has to stop herself from shaking her head to dislodge the nonsensical vision. The things look and move like remarkably muscular, wiry slugs – except they have arms, truly impressive claws, and for some reason are wearing these tattered little hood things that might be clothing, or might be part of their body, or whatever it is that demons' tangible form is called.

She peels her eyes from the necro-slugs, and that's when she spots them, on the other side of the broken bridge, using the ruins of the old fort as cover. She squints, trying to see through the glare of the hell-yolk. She identifies Cassandra first – based on the sliver of shield protruding from behind the broken wall. Varric is next – he's further back, behind a large slab of stone, and judging by his movements, is reloading the crossbow. From her elevation, she is pretty sure she can spot the other two as well – Evie and Solas are crouching behind a fallen column, Evie huddled all the way behind the stone shelter. Solas is leaning against it with his back, a faint, flickering blue glow surrounding them both. She can't see either of them well from this distance, but the mage's posture suggests either extreme exhaustion or some physical damage. Margo swallows around a frantic heartbeat in her throat.

At this point, Harding has crawled a few feet up, and the three of them are hiding behind the fallen trunk of a tree, using it to stop their slide down the gravelly slope and into the ring of otherworldly fauna.

"Alright." Harding whispers. "They're trapped in there. We need to give them a chance to break out." She turns to the ring of demons. "Maile-... I mean, Margo." Harding shakes her head, with a slight frown. "The bosses do love their code names, don't they... Anyway, hit the circle with a couple of grenades, on opposite quadrants, here, and here." She gestures with a gloved hand. "That will draw the lot of them this way once they figure out where we're pummeling them from, but should give me and Jan time to get in position. I will try to get as many wisps decommissioned as I can at long range first. Jan, go around them and try to get a few shades occupied. Margo, once you see an opening, go on the other side, here, while Jan is giving the shades a little exercise. I'll cover. Don't tangle with them, just go straight through into the fort, and get the others back on their feet. You have enough potions?"

Margo nods, through chattering teeth.

"Alright. Is everyone ready?"

Jan grins.

"Lets show these spongy bastards how it's done."

Harding frowns.

"No heroics. Keep it simple. You start getting overwhelmed, you duck out into the shadows and make yourself scarce. Margo?"

Oh hell on a stick. Just like hurling tomatoes at that thieving little shit Marcus from two houses over, right?

She gets two ampules out of her belt, stands up as quietly as she can, braces one knee against the tree trunk, and lobes the grenades – two underhand throws in quick succession – at each side of the circle. The explosions are a second or two apart, and the blast slaps her with a heat wave before she has the time to fully duck behind the trunk again.

Harding is already gone, running along the slope for a better firing position. There's a succession of sharp, whistling sounds to her left, and she watches as one, then two of the humanoid floaters flicker out of existence with a puff of green smoke, like a cloud of spores. The third shot misses, and embeds into the grass below. At this point, the circle changes formation, and the demons start making their way in Margo's general direction. The necro-slug things – at least she thinks it's them - are making extremely unpleasant noises that put Margo in mind of huge metal plates, grating at the bottom of a mine shaft.

While they're still deciding where to go, Margo throws one more grenade into the thickest cluster of the things. This time, she ducks in time to avoid the heat wave. Wherever Jan is, he's no longer behind the log.

"We are here" she hears the Seeker's clear, sharply accented voice ring out through the clearing. "We cannot move out, however!"

Margo jumps over the log, and begins to make her way down, giving the milling cluster of demons as wide a breadth as she can. Right. No tangling. No tangling sounds like a really fantastic fucking idea.

She spots Jan literally step out of a shadow, on the other side of the cluster, and attack one of the slugs with quick, economical strikes from his daggers. She was afraid that the rogue would be a show off, considering his general character, but no. He looks to her like someone who learned to fight on the streets. No frills, pure pragmatics.

She runs along the outer periphery of the green glow emitted by the hell-yolk, which is why she doesn't notice the drop into the ravine, and slides down its pebbly side with a surprised yelp and a curse. It's enough to attract the attention of two floaters who turn their non-faces her way, and spit up some kind of substance – the word that comes to her mind is ectoplasm – in her general direction. Margo drops to her stomach at the bottom of the ravine, and the shit floats on by overhead.

Then she's on her feet again, and scrambling up the other side, trying to keep her mind focused entirely on making it through the breach in the wall.

She almost makes it into the fort's perimeter, when out of the corner of her eye Margo sees another one of those floating ectoplasmic emissions hurling in her direction. Still, she's not on its trajectory – a quick estimate suggests that it's aimed at Evie's column, but as long as they don't come out of there, it'll be just fine. So she keeps running along her chosen vector towards Cassandra.

Except the fucking spectral ejaculation changes its mind mid-flight. Margo feels, more than sees, the projectile careen off its course at an angle that should not be possible, and then it slams into her, square between the shoulder-blades.

For a second, it feels like she's a sock being turned inside out and then folded into itself like a doughnut. She crumples to the floor, blood bursting from her nose in a coppery spray that clogs her throat and sinuses. She spits out – though the more accurate term would be retches - as much of it as she can, and tries to scramble to her feet. She can feel the second round of ectoplasmic junk floating at her with a sub-sonic keening, and she forces herself to roll out of the way, hitting her shoulder on the wall with a painful jolt. The otherworldly sputum splatters against the stones, covering her with a mist of spore-like particles that stink of rotting fish.

Good Lord, but these things are vile.

Then someone drags her by the armpits further into the shelter of the ruined wall.

"Are you alright, Agent?"

That's Cassandra, and Margo forces herself into a vertical position, finally coming into a crouch next to the Seeker. She still feels like she's about to puke, and has a passing thought that it'd be nice to not get any of it on Cassandra.

There's a reason she's here, right? Flasks. Yes.

She casts a quick glance at the opening, but whatever demons are trying to come through are being discouraged by a combination of Varric's fire and Harding's arrows. Except something is weird. Varric's arrows are not flying straight. Not at all, in fact. They seem to be launching off well enough, but then their trajectory changes mid-flight, and they hit everything but their intended target.

Margo frowns, and looks at the warrior woman.

"Am I seeing this right?" she asks.

Cassandra's eyes, dark in the shadow of the crumbling tower, are rimmed with an exhausted, sickly sort of purple. "Yes. This… This has been happening since the beginning, but has been getting… far worse."

What the actual fuck is with the physics around here?

"Do you have any healing potions with you?"

The question returns Margo's attention from the misbehaving arrows. She digs for a tonic – because really, that is one thing she can do – and slams two potions into Cassandra's hand. Adan calls one "healing" and the other "restorative" – which, in Margo's humble opinion, is just the difference between quick and timed release formulas.

"Can you still fight?" she asks Cassandra, who is already downing one of the draughts.

"Yes. See if you can tend to the others. Varric is fine, but has somehow managed to sprain his foot." The degree of exasperated frustration at this revelation makes Margo think that Cassandra's probably going to be alright. "Solas, though, needs help."

Margo nods.

"And Lady Trevelyan?" she asks.

"Frightened, but unscathed, as far as I can tell." That's delivered rather dryly.

Once Varric has stopped to reload, Margo makes her way towards him in a semi-crouch. She really doesn't want to risk the anarchic arrows – from their behavior, she thinks they are perfectly capable of turning around and deciding that her ass would make for an awesome pin cushion.

When she reaches the dwarf, he looks up with a shake of his head.

"Well, Prickly, you're a sight for sore eyes."

She quickly hands him his allocated potions. "How in h-... _Void_ did this happen? Scratch that, what's up with your arrows?"

The dwarf shakes his head again, and points a gloved finger towards the breach in the wall.

"It's not just my bolts. Look!"

Margo squints, and watches as Cassandra steps up from behind her shelter, and raises her shield to meet one of those hooded slugs that's propelling itself through the opening. The Seeker lifts her sword to strike a blow – and it looks like it's going to be a very nice blow, too, all kinds of on point and lethal – except that Cassandra's heel catches on a loose rock at a critical moment, and she stumbles. The strike barely grazes the demon on the shoulder.

The thing screeches its metallic war cry.

Varric raises Bianca and fires. The arrow – or, rather, bolt – actually flies true this time, and hits the slug in the abdominal area – if that thing has an abdomen, that is. It screeches some more – pissed off about the projectile in its gut, no doubt – and retreats back out through the breach.

"See, I count now. I can get approximatively every fifth bolt to hit something I actually would like it to hit."

Margo frowns. So… not just physics that's being distorted, but…

Before she can finish the thought the dwarf puts a hand on her shoulder.

"You need to make it to Chuckles. He's taken a bit too much damage when they first fell on us. You're packing magica potions, yes?"

She nods, and gets to her feet. It's not far to the column – five, six yards at most – and she covers the distance easily enough, except that when she's a yard away, her foot gets caught in a crack in the stone, and she crashes into the column with a loud, crunchy smack. Pain shoots through he left arm and into her shoulder.

She forces herself to crawl over the column, and collapses into a heap on the other side. Through the pain, she has a stark vision of Evie, her face smeared with dirt and tears, and, on the other side of her, Solas, pale as a ghost, his profile illuminated by the dull glow of whatever magic he's still managing to maintain. His head rests against the column's stone, eyes closed, features gaunt and sharp in the ethereal gleam, and Margo has trouble believing that only a day passed since she's seen him.

"M- M- Margo! Oh thank Andraste you're here!" Evie hiccups.

"Are you ok, kiddo?" Margo asks, trying to see if Evie's injured, while simultaneously pulling out a potion from the satchel, and downing it. She can afford one. The rest have to go to the others.

The pain subsides.

"I- I'm fine. Please help Solas! There was this big demon, and it came as if out of nowhere, and then Solas tried to put a barrier and freeze it in place, but then somehow that didn't work quite right, and then…"

Solas opens his eyes and looks at her, grey gaze dulled with pain.

"You cannot remain here, Lethallan. You must get away at once. It is not safe."

"I can see it's not safe!" Margo announces acerbically, because at this point meeting the universe's endless capacity to generate clusterfucks with generalized bitchiness seems vastly preferable to incoherent panic.

She gets three more ampules out of her bag – her arm does not miss the opportunity to let her know that this is not the best idea she's ever had, of course – and then crawls over to the elf, trying not to drop anything. She does, in fact, drop one ampule – it feels like it jumps out of her hand – but then she locates it just as she's about to crush it with her knee.

Once she's wedged between Solas and Evie, she looks over the elf critically. Well. She's not a doctor. But this much blood is probably not a good thing, however you want to approach it. She pries one of the ampules open – the quick release one – puts her hand at the back of Solas's neck to tilt his head up a bit, and empties the tonic into his mouth. She watches his throat work, and nods to herself, pleased. Atta elf.

His eyes peel open then, and they are less clouded, which Margo decides to file away as a huge win. Team - One, Universe – (which is revealing itself to be a cheating asshole anyway) – Zero.

She passes him the lyrium potion, and he unstoppers it with unsteady fingers, and drains it in one draw. The bluish glow gets marginally stronger.

"The only way we will get out of this alive is if the Herald uses her mark to close the rift" he says, voice deceptively calm, expression stony. At which point Margo has a feeling she is coming in on the tail-end of an ongoing argument, and has missed all the best parts.

She takes a look at Evie. The kid is shaking like a leaf.

"I can't. I'm so sorry, I can't! I am trying, but I can't, please, please don't make me come near that thing! I can't do it…"

So, the kid is terrified out of her wits and is in shock. Of course she is. Who the fuck asks someone to go wave their hands at some fluorescent hell-yolk that spits out primordial horrors?

"Evie, hun, listen to me. How far do you need to be for this to work?"

Evie is still shaking her head.

"No no no please, I can't! I really can't. I'm trying, but I can't even come close to it!"

"Sure you can, kid. We're going to go together, Ok?"

"You can't!" Now, that's Solas, and his hand is crushing her wrist in a vice-like grip that shouldn't be quite so firm considering that a minute ago he was fading. "You will get yourself killed." And it doesn't sound like a warning, or a threat, but a statement of fact.

"No I won't" Margo opines, with cheerfulness she does not feel at all. "Evie, how far?"

"Five or six yards, I think, but I'm not sure, because I've never had a chance to test it without demons there, because there are always these demons around and they're really not very helpful if you want to figure out how far out it works, and…"

Margo nods, and begins to extricate herself from Solas's grip on her wrist. He does not immediately let go.

"Here's what we're going to do. We'll let Cassandra and Varric distract the demons – they don't actually have to kill them, just distract them. Solas, do you have enough magic to cover us?"

Solas shakes his head.

"The only spell that has been remotely effective is barrier. Everything else is…" he makes a little gesture with his hand that, to Margo, seems to indicate something like "hocus pocus." He shifts, and uses his staff to help maneuver himself into a crouch. "There must be some old magics in this fort that are interfering with my focus, although I cannot quite understand their nature."

Margo thinks. But didn't Cassandra say something about this going on for longer than this particular predicament? Something about it becoming worse over time?

Whatever may be the case, they do not have time for idle speculation about the wonky physics, or what's impeding Solas's magic. The point is to get Evie out of the way of the demons, and close enough to the hell-yolk to do whatever it is that Evie does.

"Solas, is there a way up the ramparts?"

The elf looks at her, frowning.

"I am wondering if we can avoid most of the fight, and get Evie close enough to the rift."

He considers this, then nods.

"I saw a ladder on the other side of this wall. Though I am unsure as to where it leads."

Margo presses the last regeneration draught into his hand.

"Try to stay alive, yes? I'm not done with you yet."

"Oh?" And there is definitely a trace of a smile now, so Margo feels cautiously optimistic that the elf changed his mind about dying tragically. "And what plans might you be harboring for me, da'nas?"

"Curious, are you? And there's your incentive to not get killed" she grins, and then she hooks her good arm around Evie's, and begins to make her way in the direction Solas indicated.

At her back, she can hear fighting, but it all sounds relatively sluggish. The whistling of arrows, and an occasional clash of metal and demonic screeching, but she has the feeling that it's all her side can do to keep their positions.

They do find the ladder to the top of the ramparts – of course, it's tucked away in the darkest part of the ruin, and it's half-broken. She goes first, letting Evie bring up the rear. Eventually, they are atop the fortress's wall.

"Do you like heights?" Evie asks suddenly. "I really like heights. Bann Trevelyan always said I shouldn't climb around everywhere like some 'demented squirrel' – but you just feel so much better when you're up above the whole mess of it, and can see everything. It's like … the air is different."

Margo, who is not a giant fan of heights, just nods and makes some encouraging noise as they titter along the crumbling rampart.

Eventually, they make it to the farthest reach of the wall – which happens to be right above Cassandra's shelter. The amount of demons in the clearing has diminished, but not by too much. And it looks like the hell-yolk has decided to regroup, and is now sprouting green crystal protrusions like the world's most expensive and useless Czech hedgehog.

Evie's hand glows green.

"I can reach it!"

"Do it, kid" Margo nods.

Evie reaches out, and then green lightning shoots from her palm, and straight into the crystal-formerly-known-as-yolk thingy. As she does, Margo looks down, and notices a distinct change in the fortunes of her companions. Cassandra is charging the group of demons with quick, precise strikes, and each blow connects as designed. Varric's bolts are no longer flying in erratic patterns. And Solas seems to be swinging his staff around with practiced ease, raining freezing spells on the demonic horde (or what's left of it) – and for a second, Margo finds herself mesmerized by the effortless elegance of his movements.

And then the green crystal mass explodes with a shock wave. Margo fishes out her last grenade, and hurls it into the circle of otherworldly fauna. The demons seem to disintegrate into ethereal rags, reabsorbed by some invisible force into the rift's center of gravity.

"You must seal it!" she hears Solas cry out, and Evie thrusts her hand forward again, screaming through whatever physical anguish this process is causing her, her face drawn in an expression of pained concentration. But she does not stop. Then, another shock wave – like static, but with a distinct smell of rot – and the rift collapses on itself and is no more.

Down by the ramparts, Margo can see Jan, bloody but alive, limp towards the rest of the group. Harding is close on his heels, and she is greeting Cassandra with a hearty handshake.

Evie turns to her, face still wet with tears, but also resolved and kind of glowing.

"I did it! Margo, I did it, I closed it!"

Margo grins at her. They're alive. They made it out alive.

"Of course you did. See? Told you so."

Still grinning, Margo steps forward to give Evie a hug, and then a loose stone wobbles under her foot. She tries to keep her balance, crouching instinctively towards the ground. It would have worked, too, if not for the freaky, completely uncalled for gust of wind that blows dust from the wall's eroded surface into her eyes. On instinct, she throws her hands up, and then her heel dislodges the unstable cobblestone, and, with a brief titter on the edge of the wall, Margo loses her footing, and plummets down.

"Margo, no!"

She gets a glimpse of Evie's face, distorted by panic, before it careens out of view.

The last thing she sees before her body breaks against the stones at the foot of the ramparts is the crimson disk of the rising sun slicing through the feathery gray foam of morning clouds.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by Czech hedgehogs, the colloquial name for one type of WW-2 anti-tank barricade.

Next up: Competing interests; the Inquisition expands its ranks


	12. Chapter 12: Adrift

She drifts.

"We cannot tarry much longer. The Inquisition's meeting with the clerics must happen, and soon." A steely, crisply accented voice.

"I do not work miracles, Cassandra. The three of you are free to go. I will not have her moved before her bones have mended." Tired. Exhausted by the same debate.

A pause.

"Respectfully, Solas, you are being unreasonable. When you joined with the Inquisition, you realized the importance of what we were doing. And the price that would be exacted of us all. We cannot afford to delay."

"Be that as it may, I have a duty here. Besides, I doubt the presence of an apostate will sway the Chantry in the Inquisition's favor." Heat beneath the ice.

"If this is about your status as an apostate, then I assure you that you will be in no more danger from the clerics than the rest of us."

"It's not… Do you not see the irony? We would likely not be alive to indulge in this pointless debate had it not been for her."

"And yet, decisions must be made. There are more significant matters that need to be addressed here."

A long pause.

"The moral slope you walk is a slippery one, Seeker. I fear you would not find its bottom to your liking." Ice beneath the heat.

"Have a care, Solas. Until such a time that your skills are easily replaceable, your oath binds you. And after that, you _are_ no longer indispensable."

"Then I shall hope that a replacement is forthcoming."

A third voice. The dwarf.

"Shh, you two! You're going to wake everyone up."

She tries to anchor herself, but can't find a foothold. The flesh feels too heavy. Too painful. She drifts off again…

After an eternity, she floats once more.

"Let him sleep, Seeker. He needs the rest." The dwarf. Casual. Conciliatory.

"He is not thinking through this clearly." Hard. Speaking through impatience.

A frustrated sigh.

"He's just trying to do what he thinks is the right thing."

"Is that what you call this interminable stalling? He is being rather selective about _which_ aspect of the right thing he chooses to be zealous about. Certainly, the Inquisition needs healers. But it is equally his duty to accompany the Herald. If this procrastination is brought on by his concerns over the Chantry's treatment of the mages…"

A sigh.

"You know, I really don't think that this is what's going on here." A bit sarcastic. Also, frustrated.

"Then what?"

A pause.

"Don't tell me you've never found yourself actually giving a shit, Seeker."

"Of course, I 'give a shit,' Varric! Would I be here if I did not?" Lonely.

"It's not…" A sigh. "Do you ever think that people might be more than fodder for someone's war? Do you ever pause and look up? You might be surprised to find that there's still a world out here. With people in it." Amused. A bit bitter, and unsure why. Wants an answer, but doesn't know which one.

"Of course I do!" A long pause. "But not everyone is like you, Varric. Do _you_ ever think of people as more than fodder for your stories?" Angry, but mostly just vulnerable. Hoping he doesn't notice.

"Shhh!" A third voice. "Enough of this. Get a tent."

"It's not… like that!" Peeved.

Quiet chortle.

"I swear, dwarf, if…"

Margo drifts off.

"Seeker Pentaghast, with all due respect, I do not think one more day will make a difference, and Solas says…" That's the kid. Fresh, new steel in her voice.

"I know what Solas says, Herald. He has been saying the same thing for the last week. But we cannot wait any longer. Leliana sends news that Mother Giselle's recommendation has reached Orlais. If we do not go at once, we lose whatever advantage her endorsement might have gained us."

"But surely one more day will not make that much of a difference."

"It is Orlais, Lady Trevelyan. You know as well as I do that the social climate changes there in an instant."

She drifts…

"Well, Seeker. We're ready. You all packed up, Herald?"

"I still think we should listen to Solas and stay one more day." Pleading.

"Solas has _finally_ agreed that, at this point, it is out of his hands. Scout Harding and the others will look after Margo. Her body is healing. The question is whether her consciousness will return, and this depends on the Maker, not us." Urgent. Impatient.

"Come on, Tricky. You heard the woman. The Orlesian Chantry isn't going to recruit itself."

"Varric, why do I get to be 'Tricky'?"

"I just have a feeling about these things. Let's go."

"We'll take care of her, Seeker." Harding. "This camp offers an excellent location, and is secured. We'll use the time to find out more about that Grey Warden. There has also been some strange traces of Carta presence I wouldn't mind learning more about."

"Very well, Scout. You have my thanks."

"Come back, da'nas." Soft. Barely a whisper. After a long hesitation. "You claimed you were not done yet. I intend to hold you to that."

As she floats, something catches. And then, she is anchored again.

When she opens her eyes, the pain is a distant echo, which tells Margo she's dreaming. It is the first time in what feels like ages that the dreamworld is stable, and not a flickering mess through which her consciousness is hurling like a bullet.

She looks around, and expects the typical sight – the now familiar fields of summer grasses – but it's not. She is in the Apothecary, and it is late evening, the sky outside the window almost black. A single candle is burning on the desk, pulling shadows along the walls.

Solas is sitting in one of the chairs, but when he notices her, he springs to his feet, expression tense.

"You… You are back. You have regained enough consciousness to find your way through the Fade." A pause. "This is good!" He forces his face into a neutral expression, but it looks like it takes physical effort. "When I could not locate you for several days, I became… concerned."

He trails off, and looks at her. Everything about his posture seems a little uncertain, and it is strange to see this uncertainty dream-side, where he so clearly feels more at home.

Margo takes a few steps forward.

"Ok. Alright. Just... Give it to me straight. Did… did the fall damage the spinal cord? Will I be able to walk?"

Because that is the only thought her mind currently has room for.

He frowns, but then his expression softens as the meaning of her question reaches him.

"No, da'nas, you are not paralyzed. Your body is healing well." He peers at her with an odd intensity she is unsure what to make of. "This… was not my primary concern. I had the chance to cast a barrier spell when I heard the Herald's cry. It absorbed much of the impact." His gaze turns stormy, and a little distant. "Had it been a second later..."

At this point, though, Margo has stopped listening. She is so absolutely elated by this news that she is practically jumping up and down. She's alive! She's not going to be paralyzed! She'll walk!

She crosses over to Solas, and, before she realizes what she's about to do, cups his face, lifts up on her toes, and plants a firm kiss at the corner of his lips.

And then she blinks and steps away, because… Well, maybe that was a bit impulsive.

The elf colors, lips slightly parted in surprise, and then his eyes travel to her mouth, and he looks like he's having a very heated debate with himself about what to do about this new development. He shakes his head, takes a half-step toward her, then stops in his tracks, and just stares at her, a little helplessly.

"Thank you. For putting me back together. Again." Margo smiles, feeling so relieved it's hard to put into words. Then she giggles. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall… She supposes the humor would be a bit lost on him, but maybe she can tell him about the little rhyme later, and the debates around whether or not it refers to King Richard the III, or an egg, or a siege engine. Because, clearly, all three are known to fall off walls. "I feel like I'm making a bad habit of this, but you saved my hide. Again."

Solas, in the meantime, decides to manage whatever internal conflict is still taking place the usual way: by pacing around the room, hands folded at his back.

"You are… welcome. Nevertheless, your body took a lot of damage, and it will be a week of rest, at least, before you are fully mended. I strongly recommend you abstain from doing anything stupid in that time."

She grins at him. "Stupid? I never do anything stupid. Just… ill advised. And only in retrospect."

He stops his oscillations, and comes to stand in front of her, balancing a little on the balls of his feet. "And you feel… yourself? Connected to your body?"

She considers his question, then nods. "Yes. It took a few tries, but I believe I 'reincorporated.'"

That gets her a surprised little chuckle, along with a worried frown.

"I'm fine. Apparently, you do, in fact, work miracles." She pauses. "Where are you? Geographically, I mean?"

"Accompanying the others to Val Royaux, as per Cassandra's very insistent requests." At her cocked eyebrow, he adds "The capital city of Orlais."

Margo nods. Right. That's the French-sounding kingdom somewhere west from where they are that Cassandra and the others have been debating about while she was out of commission.

"Yes. Evie needs to collect the support of… the Chantry clerics, did I overhear this right?"

Solas nods."Futile as the exercise will likely prove to be."

Margo cocks an eyebrow. "You don't put much faith in their ability to help?"

"I do not put much faith in the Chantry's willingness to put aside its petty squabbles and appetite for worldly power, especially considering the Inquisition's claims to Lady Trevelyan's status as Herald of Andraste."

Ah. Bloated religious organization meddling in politics. Some things stay constant. "Are there other allies that might be persuaded to come on board while you're there?"

He shrugs. "It is possible. Though I have no doubt that if they do, it will be to pursue their own agendas."

Well, perhaps there are other things that might be useful in Orlais. Maybe the similarities with France do not end with linguistics?

"Solas, do they have fancy bakeries in Val Royaux? And before you ask… In my world, there is actually a geopolitical … or cultural… entity that sounds remarkably similar to this Orlais, and they came up with a delightful thing called _eclairs…_ "

Solas blinks, and then his expression turns profoundly peeved. "I have spent the better part of the week rebuilding your fractured bones shard by broken shard, while scouring the Fade for your wayward spirit. And now you are suggesting that you would like me to bring you back a _pastry_?" And he sounds equal parts incredulous, scandalized, and entertained by this.

"Well, now that you mentioned it…"

The elf shakes his head, and then sort of half-shrugs and half throws up his hands in a gesture that Margo thinks is meant to express a state of bafflement of truly cosmic dimensions.

"Whatever am I going to do with you, da'nas?"

The temptation to tease him is almost overwhelming, but there was some kind of important matter she wanted to bring up…

Aha. The wonky physics.

"Before I forget. You said there were strange magics in the fort – something that affected your focus, and your ability to cast."

He frowns, then nods, expression attentive. "And, it wasn't just you, yes? You saw Varric's arrows?"

Another nod.

"When I entered the perimeter, it began to affect me as well. I am not normally quite this clumsy."

"Indeed not. Far from it."

And of course, it's not the words, it's _how_ he delivers them. Margo sighs. The warm and fuzzies apparently never sleep. And damn the elf, why does this work so well on her in the first place?

"I noticed something when we were on the ramparts. The three of you were suddenly able to fight again, without the strange… probability handicap."

Solas frowns, perhaps replaying the events, trying to examine her model. "Yes. Yes, you are right. It is as if our luck had turned then. But not yours."His expression grows dark."I saw you. When you lost your footing. It was as if a gust of wind had pushed you off the wall."

She sighs. "Look, correlation doesn't mean causation – this may be nothing more than two coinciding, but independent events – but there was only one variable that changed."

His eyes widen in understanding. "Of course. The Herald.

Margo nods. "Evie." She pauses. "As you know, my world does not have magic as yours does…"

"I have gathered as much. In fact, I have been quite curious how you make sense of the magic you see here."

Margo begins to tap her lips with a finger. It's an old, slightly childish tic that occasionally surfaces when she's absorbed in a mental model, and she's a bit surprised to notice that it carried over to the Fade. Then she looks up, and realizes that it seems to have a distinctly distracting effect on the elf. She stops. He wrestles his gaze from her lips, and clears his throat.

"So, to answer your question… one optic through which you might describe magic is probability." Margo is not sure if the term is in fact in the Theodosian repertoire, or whether it means the same thing, but perhaps the explanation will take care of whatever false cognates there might be. "So, let's take, a lightning strike. You might say that by causing it, you are bending probability such that a lightning bolt would strike at a precise moment, and a precise location, as a factor of your will." She makes a 'lightning strike' gesture with her hand, accompanied by a little sound effect.

Solas cocks an eyebrow, but then his expression clears, a quick sequence of emotions molding his features – curiosity, surprise, understanding, excitement – into an eventual smile."Ah. By probability you do not simply mean a mere turn of phrase – like abstract chance – but a precise parameter?"

"Yes." Of course, she's not a scientist by training, and it's not like she can explain probability in its statistical sense… But the concept has cultural traction, and she wonders whether it might port to this world enough that Solas might find some parallels. "I wish I could explain this more precisely, but bear with me. Is it possible that there's something about the magic in Evie's mark that skews probability – luck - the other way?"

He considers this. "I do not know, lethallan. I have heard of magics that purport to affect luck directly – mostly, this is a Tevinter specialty, from what I understand. Though it is a fascinating question, and there is certainly _something_ that seems to tip the scales not in our favor. But…"

She waits for him to finish the thought.

"The effect, whatever causes it, is not constant. So much so, in fact, that I did not see it as part of a pattern until you drew my attention to it. It appears to affect situations where danger is imminent…"

He looks at her then, and there is something quizzical in his expression, like he is trying to puzzle out the meaning of some abstract symbol. His eyes lock on hers, then travel along her face – cheekbone, jawline, lips.

On impulse, she brushes her fingertips against the back of his hand. His fingers twitch, then capture hers. Again, he takes a fraction of a step towards her – and Margo suddenly wonders if he's entirely in control of the impulse – but then he seems to recall himself, and halts the momentum in its tracks.

She meets his gaze - because there was something important she was trying to impart on him, right?

"It's not Evie's fault, whatever it is. She asked for none of this. However, please, try to stay safe. Don't… I don't know, start a duel while you're trying to sweet-talk the clerics, alright?"

She gets a chuckle for that one. "Try as I might to picture this scenario, it is unlikely that the clerics of the Orlesian Chantry will find an apostate's 'sweet-talk' persuasive. Let us hope that Seeker Pentaghast or Lady Trevelyan take this task upon themselves."

Margo shrugs. "Don't sell yourself short. If _I_ were a cleric, I am sure I would find you perfectly persuasive."

She had meant it in the sense that clerics are probably well-disposed to complex exegetical debates, but somehow it comes out sounding quite a bit more… ambiguous. Uh-oh. She knows this smirk. This is going to be followed by some kind of outrageous statement, isn't it? Though, she did set herself up for it, so no point in crying foul now…

But he doesn't say anything. Just considers her, with a distinctly mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"Yes?"

"Oh, nothing." Fake innocence if she's ever seen it. "I was simply trying to imagine you as a cleric. In Chantry robes."

She cocks an eyebrow. "Why? Are they particularly fetching robes?"

"Oh, no. Not at all. Quite awful, in fact. Upon consideration, I would much rather picture you without them."

The elf is looking pleased with himself. Margo shoots him a dirty look.

"You know you're an outrageous flirt, right?"

He chuckles, but then the smile turns a little wistful. "Ah, da'nas, you are right. Compliments about your physical form come easily. They are objectively true, of course. But they are also a clumsy distraction from the fact that it is when I think of your spirit that words fail me."

Margo blinks. Processes. And then the warm fuzzies tackle her - as they do - and she just throws her hands up in her own rendition of cosmic befuddlement.

"I'll append my earlier statement. You're an _egregious_ flirt."

Solas, in the meantime, has managed to migrate from wistful all the way to melancholy.

"Please try to stay in one piece while we're away" he says.

"Don't forget about the pastry," she smiles sweetly in return.

This seems to snap him out of it, at least for the time being. His expression turns speculative. "I wonder what you might think of frilly cakes…"

Before she has time to inquire whether frilly cakes and eclairs share any similarities, Margo wakes up for good.


	13. Chapter 13: Truth or Dare

"No no no! Again, you just did it! You lunge like that you make this entire area vulnerable to a pommel strike."

The great bearded menace proceeds to demonstrate what a pommel strike to the clavicle might feel like under less controlled circumstances. To this end, he grabs ahold of Margo's forearm – conveniently extended, practice dagger and all – and gives it a casual little jerk, which has the unhappy effect of bringing the crunchy part of her shoulder in close contact with the clubby part of his sword. Margo greets this with a displeased "oof," dives under his arm, and scuttles out of the way, trying to get a good kidney stab in before her opponent has the chance to permanently disable her with some other kind of "symbolic" death blow.

She doesn't get far. Warden Blackwall, nothing if not defying all known laws of physics concerning the relationship between mass and velocity, sweeps out with his foot. Margo anticipates the move and jumps, narrowly avoiding being tripped up, but just as she lands back into the snow relatively unscathed, the accursed bear simply tackles her under her knees, lifts her off the ground in some kind of wrestling move, and proceed to deposit her into the nearest snow bank. All to the slow clapping of the giant Qunari, and to Sera's rather licentious whistle.

"Well, Beardy, this time it took you a whole five minutes to get her on her back. I say that's an improvement!"

Margo climbs out of the snow pile, and launches a quick flurry of snowballs, one of which smacks Sera square between the eyes, one that crashes against Blackwall's breastplate and sprays up into his beard, and one which the Qunari almost manages to dodge, if it weren't for his horns.

"Not bad." The Iron Bull wipes off the snow from his head as if the very nature of the substance was an offence to the gods. "If these were actual grenades, you'd have two opponents missing heads, and one missing a face. Or, well, a beard. Don't know if there's any kind of face under there."

"Yeah, but she's still shite in close combat." That, of course, is Sera, who has recovered from Margo's attack by shaping whatever's left of her snowball into something that looks distinctly X-rated. "Unless, of course, she's faking it and all of this is an excuse to grapple with Warden Blackwall here, all up close and personal or what have you."

At this point Sera starts making kissy noises, right up until the moment the aforementioned Warden dumps her in the same snow bank.

"Two elves in as many minutes. You're setting a new record, big guy" Iron Bull opines.

Margo looks between the trio, and shakes her head in consternation. When taken individually, each of the new additions to the Inquisition's ranks seem like perfectly reasonable characters – well, safe, perhaps, for Sera. But if you combine the three together, some unholy chemical reaction takes place, and the level of trash talk evolves from whatever regular army banter one might expect in your average, run of the mill barracks, to something only seen among twelve year old boys after too much sugar.

It's been a week since she's been back from the Hinterlands with the rest of Harding's patrol. Two weeks since Evie and her retinue left for Orlais. The physical consequences of her reenactment of Humpty Dumpty have largely dissipated, a combination of Solas's clearly impressive magical skills, and of a very steady regime of healing tonics she has been experimenting with since she's been able to drag herself to a worktable. Master Adan, after giving her a rather long and detailed lecture on safety precautions for navigating crumbling ramparts, brought out a new set of alchemy books she had not seen before, and they had been working to improve Auntie's more classical formulas. "Work that needs to be done anyway" Adan piped up enthusiastically, clearly happy that now said work could be done with the help of a willing guinea pig.

Margo can't quite decide whether she was ridiculously lucky, or whether Thedas's combination of magic and alchemy completely skew the parameters of what normal mortality and life expectancy might look like.

Whatever might be said of Evie, she's been busy. Sera was the first to make her appearance, closely followed by the Qunari. And then, a day or two later, Blackwall marched in as well. According to Harding's grapevine – which, from what Margo can tell, is really more of an industrial-sized orchard with adjacent winery – the first two very actively volunteered their services. Blackwall was more of an opportunistic hire, and mostly by dint of Leliana's insistence. Something about her having a fondness for Grey Wardens, for whatever reason.

According to Harding, the quartet was now courting yet another addition, a high-society mage from the Orlesian court, with the discouraging moniker of "Madame de Fer." Whether the label is meant to suggest their prospective ally's strong endorsement of economic austerity measures, evoke her similarity to the medieval torture device (which Margo has always thought to be a juicer designed with a vampire customer in mind), or simply refer to a penchant for heavy metal, none of it strikes Margo as auspicious, whichever way you look at it.

Well, at least they're all still alive. From everything she heard about Orlais, Margo has a strong suspicion that attending Orlesian high society salons while dead – or undead for that matter – would be considered gauche, and quite possibly very last season.

There have been no repeat visits from the elf during her excursions into the Fade, though, and it isn't precisely that she is feeling worried about it, but… Maybe 'diffusely anxious' would capture the sentiment better. And once she finally manages to identify the exact nature of the emotion, Margo emits an exasperated grunt, almost spilling the potion she is working on, and spooking the bats in the Apothecary's rafters in the process, and proceeds to smack her forehead with the heel of her palm, on the slim hope that this will realign her clearly addled brain. Because it is just like waiting for that text message or phone call, except in dream form, and she is too old for this shit and has better things to do. No way. Warm and fuzzies are all well and good. But not this. She's not about to start pining. Or languishing. Or any other 19th century Victorian afflictions. Hellmouth can freeze over first. Or spit out yodeling marmots. Or both.

So Margo does what any accidental body snatcher with an emotional problem to actively ignore would: she decides to churn virtue from necessity and make new friends.

The Qunari is first. Because after the fifth time she "accidentally" passes by his tent on her way to the forge on entirely fabricated pretenses that she is using as an unconvincing excuse to try to make sense of what sort of creature this new Homo Minotauricus might be, he calls her out on it.

"You know, Blondie, if you want to gawk, just do us both a favor and gawk properly. Your back and forth is giving me a headache" the giant announces.

Margo startles – because, of course, no one likes to be called out on their bullshit – but then decides that she might as well take the bull by the horns, as it were.

"I'm sorry." She approaches, and it's like one of those optic distortions, whereby objects in the rearview mirror really are larger than they appear. And have pointier horns. "I'm Margo. You are a Qunari, correct?"

The giant nods.

"Never seen one of us before? Then I can't blame you. We have that effect."

Margo takes the invitation at face value and proceeds to ask the Homo Minotauricus a slew of rather nosy questions about what the hell the mythical Qunari are. She gets a series of more or less detailed answers, which leave her with the impression that the Qun is what would have happened if George Orwell had read a lot of pop Buddhism before writing 1984.

"You know, that is very gracious of you." It seems only polite to thank the fellow. "It's not that often that one gets an invitation to openly stare and then ask invasive questions. I do hope dragons are also this accommodating."

This gets the giant – whose name turns out to be Iron Bull – to guffaw, and then suddenly launch into an enthusiastic lecture on how to kill the lizards in question.

From there, they somehow get onto gaatlok and the relative merits of plant versus animal based poisons, and from there it's not exactly a fast route to friendship, but at least they both agree that the other has their priorities straight.

Blackwall turns out pretty easy too, and Margo thinks it's mostly because he's a little lonely, and a little unused to being around that many people while not killing things. So he keeps volunteering for the odd manual labor jobs around the camp, and, having noticed this commendable trait, Master Adan sends her to recruit the Warden to help haul the new, much larger ingredient mill from the forge to the Apothecary. "Go use your feminine wiles" he instructs, and waves his hand.

As it turns out, no feminine wiles are required, and the Warden is more than happy to lend a hand. They get talking about the merits – or rather the lack thereof – of most restorative draughts, and he reveals that he has a terrible time getting past a gag reflex with the standard elfroot decoction.

"It is pretty bitter" Margo clucks sympathetically, trying to keep the amusement out of her voice.

"It's fucking vile, is what it is" the Warden corrects, and at that point, she's chortling.

"I can try to brew you a special batch that neutralizes some of the taste, if you want."

It's impossible to actually tell what his facial expression might be behind all that lush growth, but, based on the eyes, she thinks it is surprise and amusement? Maybe?

"You'd do that? I'll trade you melee lessons for it."

"Deal" Margo nods, and they shake hands.

Sera turns out to be the hardest one by far.

"Aw, shite, you're an elf. Are you one of them really elfie ones? No face tats, right, but that doesn't mean anything, sometimes it's the street ones that are the biggest nobs, because 'ooh, our empire had advanced magics when humans were still swinging off trees' and fuck of a lot of good that did anyone."

Margo furrows her brow trying to follow all this.

"What's an elfie elf?" she finally asks. That seems safe enough.

"You know. Like, all performing being elfie and what not."

"I am definitely not that" Margo volunteers carefully. Primarily because she has a very slim idea what 'elfiness' looks like, let alone how one would go about performing it. But she does make a mental note of learning more about the internal divisions and politics of elven identity. It seems like the least she can do if she's going to inhabit this body for the foreseeable future.

"Ah, well. Maybe you're alright then."

And that is how they end up where they are, which is to say, with snow in uncomfortable places. Every day, one of them helps Margo "re-train" her skills, in exchange for very specific, customized alchemical preparations. Ironically, all three do not – or pretend they do not – realize that the two others are trading their mentorship for precisely the same favor. Sera wants an ointment that keeps her toes warm – but isn't greasy on application because "Ew, squishy toes!" For Blackwall's elfroot aversion, Margo simply uses molasses in the final mixture. Eventually, the Qunari makes his request as well, at which point Margo almost expects something a bit ridiculous, or, at the very least, trivial.

It is not. The skin under his eye patch chafes in Haven's cold weather, so when he flips up the black leather strip for Margo to take a look, she winces sympathetically. She whips up the ointment the same day. That seems to get the giant firmly in her camp. "Alright, Blondie. I'll help you work with the poisons. Once you graduate past big guy." She does wonder whether he would be quite so magnanimous if he knew that she used Auntie's recipe for diaper rash cream as the foundation for the salve.

The tavern is packed, hot, and reeking of cabbage stew. They settle at a table next to Harding, Jan, and a handful of other scouts, fresh from patrol in some questionable place called The Fallow Mire. Harding says they've barely managed to scout anything, and will need to send more people. "I think Leliana mentioned she'd like you to take that on. Might want to check in with her" Harding adds, and there's something about her expression that gets Margo concerned.

"What's in the Fallow Mire?" she asks.

"Dead shit. Lots and lot of dead shit." That's Jan, and for once, he looks too disgusted to attempt to chase tail. Come to think of it, they all have a kind of lingering decomposition smell – faint, but still there. "Also, Avvar. Dead shit and Avvar. I don't know what I ever did to the Spymaster to get this assignment."

Sera, already done with her second bowl of cabbage soup, comes back with another round of beers, and a pretzel she somehow managed to sweet-talk Flissa into giving her.

"Alright, dead things, boring shite, blah blah blah. What are we playing? 'Truth or dare' or 'who would you rather'?"

Blackwall and Harding groan in annoyance simultaneously.

Margo gets up.

"And that's my cue to go make some lyrium potions for the impending new mage."

"Not so fast."

She gives Iron Bull a dirty look. Et tu, Brutus?

"I'll start. Margo. Who would you rather, a Vint, or a Qunari?"

She shoots him a quick look, trying to gauge what's behind the question. And while her other table companions all sport a predictable range of expressions – from mildly exasperated to amused to curious – the horned mountain has a very careful look behind the casual mask. Margo wonders, not for the first time, how many practicing spymasters there are in the Inquisition.

"I'm outa here" she states with great dignity.

"Well, I think we all know the answer to that one anyway" Jan winks.

Harding shoots her an apologetic look. Aha. So Maile's legacy is making the rounds. Well, good to know.

"Wait, what? Oh no you don't. Not after that little revelation." That's Sera, and she genuinely looks like she hasn't heard any of the circulating rumors.

Margo's heartbeat accelerates. Not that this is catastrophic, but she would rather extricate herself from the uncomfortable direction of the conversation – or, minimally, control its unfolding.

She forces herself to sit. This is the problem with this world. Everyone seems to have secrets within secrets, like whole nested dolls worth of secrets that sometimes aren't even yours to keep. Such as, for example, what she now suspects about Evie, and that has been steadily gnawing at her by the impossibility to share it or drag it into the open.

"Fine, fine" she says, to the hoots of a couple of her table companions. "A Vint or a Qunari, was that the question?"

She's stalling of course, and a quick look at the Iron Bull tells her that he knows this.

He nods. "That's right, Blondie. Simple, really."

"Ok, what are the other parameters at play? What is their respective training?"

Bull cocks an eyebrow at this – the scarred one above his bad eye – but humors her.

"Lets even the odds, and say they're both mages."

Margo suppresses a smile, because, of course, he's just given her the perfect out. Thank the Heavens for Adan indulging her reading habits on Theodosian politics.

"Then the Qunari."

Jan frowns.

"Wait, why?"

"Because at least he wouldn't talk your ear off" she grins, miming the act of sewing her mouth shut.

This earns her a hearty set of guffaws, especially from the women at the table. Margo can't help but sigh inwardly, an unpleasant sense of foreboding nagging at her. She is not sure that the image of the tough as nails, heartless operative that Maile has left as her legacy is one she wants to wear. And the irony, of course, is that Maile herself was not that.

"And now, I really am off. Sera, do you want my turn?"

Sera, of course, jumps at the opportunity.

"Alright. Blackwall. Lady Montyliet or Seeker Pentaghast?"

On her way to the door, she hears Blackwall choke on his beer.

"Andraste's Ass, Sera, I'm not answering that."

Margo makes her way to the Apothecary, but decides to forego the Lyrium potions in favor of an early night.

And to be fair, she even has an excuse. Because she has had ample opportunity to mull over the Evie problem, and is now unable to select a course of action. And she tells herself that what she really wants is someone to talk to about it. Right. Just… someone to bounce ideas off. Nothing more. She closes her eyes.

She opens them and finds herself in Solas's hut. There is barely enough light from the window to etch out the contours of the furniture, and the house feels empty, long unoccupied.

Solas is sitting on the bed, elbows on knees, and gaze at the floor, in a position so similar to the one she remembers from their unfortunate ritual that she almost instinctively reaches out to him. Her heart does a painful little skip, and Margo tells herself that it is just the unexpected surprise of the Fade call actually connecting.

"Hello, da'elgar" he says quietly, without looking up.

Tentatively, she walks over to the bed, and lowers herself next to him.

"Solas, are you alright? You seem…" She can't quite capture the words to describe his mood. It is not a sadness, exactly, but a kind of ancient melancholy that seems almost abstract, rather than prompted by anything specific, and that therefore feels profoundly unmendable.

He looks up at her, his eyes dark in the gloom.

"I am fine. Simply tired. But you have come with a question. Something ailing your thoughts. Is it about our Herald?"

She looks at him, and wonders how he knows, and then of course, wonders whether this same issue has been ailing him as well.

"Yes. I can't quite decide what I'm supposed to do about it. As in, does she know? Is there even anything to know? Do I confront her? Do I tell the others? Cassandra, Cullen…? And what if she doesn't know, then where exactly does that leave me?"

She sighs, immensely grateful that she can share this festering ball of questions with someone who knows about them, and knows about her. Since their absence, her life has been further devolving into a very careful waltz on treacherous grounds – 'look casual, dear, oh and mind the snakes.' It is a relief to put her guard down.

The elf nods.

"But it is not your secret to share, Lethallan, is it? Let us say you tell Cassandra, or any of the others. Then would that not alienate the girl from you? She does seem to place a lot of trust in her relationship with you. Do you truly wish to betray that trust? Or, if you confront her about your suspicions, what are the chances that she will heed your warning? She is young and sheltered, not accustomed to taking responsibility for herself."

Solas sighs, then turns to her. He raises his hand, and softly traces the contour of her cheekbone with his thumb, eventually letting it rest just a quarter of an inch away from the corner of her lips.

Something isn't… quite right. It's subtle. But…

Margo jumps up and away from the bed, a spasm of ancient, sticky terror prickling the skin on her arms, and between her shoulder blades. She has always been of the school of thought that Medieval monks allegedly yelling things like "Away with you, Devil!" or any such dramatic demands for said evil entity to absquatulate would be ineffective at best, and induce fits of hilarity from the entity in question at worst.

Now, she really does understand why the monks might have been compelled to such pointless injunctions.

"You're not Solas" she states instead, trying to suppress her revulsion at the gothic horror of the close-but-imperfect imitation.

Non-Solas inclines its head, and its eyes are twinkling with humor that looks almost intimately familiar.

"No? Ah, but that is simply a matter of perspective. Tell me, little spirit, what do you need from the wolf – or, really, not even the wolf itself, but the shadow of its shadow?"

Margo narrows her eyes at this strange appellation. Didn't baba make a similar sort of lupine reference?

"What could you possibly be hoping for? Companionship? A nice conversation, perhaps? Someone to confide in? To counsel you through your uncertainties? Ah, and a little roll in the hay, maybe?" It laughs, and it sounds so much like Solas, but too loud on the high tones. "We could do any of that and more. No strings attached. A… private little secret. Because, little spirit, it is time you faced the truth. You are pining. And he clearly is occupied elsewhere, is he not? So why torture yourself?"

Oh fuck this very much, she doesn't need this.

"Thanks. Not interested. Go carpetbag somewhere else."

The thing laughs again, and Margo, at this point, wants to scream to drown out the sound of it, its perverse little dissonance.

"But I am getting better, am I not? You like your wolf melancholy. That gets you to come sit down, to offer consolation. And I remember you like him a little forward, too."

It flicks its fingers, and Margo doubles over with a wave of lust so strong it is practically sickening.

"You see. I learn well, little spirit. Next time, you might not be able to tell the difference."

It gets up, covers the distance between them, and presses its lips to her ear.

"Next time, you might not care."

She screams then, because there doesn't seem to be anything else left to do.

And then there is a shift in the quality of the dream, as if the Fade folds on itself - the beginning of some cosmic origami - and the Non-Solas thing dissolves into a puff of purplish vapor.

She straightens, slowly, on wobbly legs, the residual vertigo still pulling at the pit of her stomach. And then there is a steadying hand on her shoulder and she turns and sees the elf. Again.

Margo peers into his face, trying to find the slight wrong, the trace of distortion. Like something else with a slightly different bone structure wearing his skin. But it truly does feel like Solas. Except, she doesn't trust herself to know. Not for sure.

His eyes widen, expression tense, and worried, and he is searching her face for the answer to whatever he sees there.

"I heard you, da'nas. What happened?"

And at that point, the temptation to dissolve into sobs and sort of melt into his arms is almost overwhelming. Except, she supposes they're not quite on those terms either.

Instead, Margo straightens her shoulders.

"Our buddy Imshael paid another visit." And then, as his expression turns dark, Margo puts her hands on her hips, cocks an eyebrow and demands, "And when the hell are you coming back anyway?"


	14. Chapter 14: Frilly Cakes

Instead of her usual location in the Frozen Cartographic Tent of Doom, Spymaster Leliana turns out to be in the temple's main hall. If Margo didn't know any better, she would have to assume that Torquemada is actually enjoying a spot of normal human conversation. Her two interlocutors are Mother Giselle – who, to give credit to the elf where credit is due, is indeed sporting some pretty underwhelming Chantry robes (though their plainness pales in comparison with the much more aggressive ugliness of the headdress) – and a new arrival, a statuesque, impeccably dressed woman with closely cropped hair and a stunningly imperious expression.

This, Margo assumes, is the mythical Orlesian mage.

As she makes her way towards the Spymaster – and she's only dragging her feet a little – the mage turns, considers her from under slightly hooded, perfectly highlighted eyelids as if Margo might be some heretofore unknown, yet not particularly interesting species of mold – and calls to her.

"Ah, how fortunate you are here, dear. Run along and fetch me a cup of tea from the kitchens, will you? It is terribly cold in this keep. And for Heavens' sake, do not over-sweeten it."

At this, she turns to Leliana.

"Do your servants over-sweeten your tea too? I heard this fascinating theory once about the origins of the practice…"

Margo blinks. Right. Do you take your morning coffee with one or two spoons of raw class antagonism?

Torquemada, to Margo's utter shock, has the grace to look a little embarrassed by this.

"Great Enchanter Vivienne, please meet one of my agents." She hesitates for a few seconds, clearly looking for a way to phrase whatever's coming next more diplomatically. "The Inquisition is a military operation, and, as you will see, we deploy our people in accordance with their skills, rather than previously held social status."

Great Enchanter Vivienne cocks a delicately tweezed eyebrow.

"Oh, pardon me. Agent. But surely, Sister Nightingale, this is not a reason to forego the benefits of civilization entirely? If you wish for the nobility of both countries to accord the Inquisition the attention and deference it is due, it is good to follow some simple principles of, as we say in Orlais, 'comme il faut.'"

Torquemada swallows all of that with only a mildly soured expression.

"Of course, Grand Enchanter, you are certainly correct. And forgive my occasional failures at proper hospitality – we are, alas, stretched a little thin." She turns to Margo. "Agent, I am glad you have stopped by. How is your health?"

Margo tries to determine whether this is a trick question.

"Much improved, thank you for asking" she volunteers cautiously.

"Excellent. I am told you have acquitted yourself well in the Hinterlands. We are hearing some troubling reports about Avvar unrest it the Fallow Mire. There are also other… difficulties in the region – something having to do with an epidemic, we believe. I thought an Alchemist's presence would be beneficial there, and I cannot, as you know, spare Master Adan." She pauses, and then adds, as if in afterthought. "You leave tomorrow at dawn. Scout Harding will be putting together a patrol. You may consult with the Lady Herald – I can spare whoever she does not need for her own tasks. They may come with you should they so desire." Tirade delivered, Torquemada gives her a curt nod, and Margo decides she has been dismissed.

The Grand Enchanter smiles knowingly.

"Ah, Leliana, that is an excellent idea. Too many idle hands in a camp make for a rather uncouth ambiance." At this, she cuts Margo a look.

Margo walks away, humming The Internationale.

What was it that Jan was saying yesterday? Dead shit? Great. Who doesn't love dead shit.

And then, as she exits the temple, she breaks into a huge grin as she spots Varric's outrageously bright red kaftan right by the requisitions tent.

And this means that they're all back.

Varric spots her almost as quickly.

"Prickly! You've recovered!" He walks over, and, to Margo surprise, opens his arms wide for a hug. She's more than happy to oblige, even if the dwarf's head does only come up to her chest. But the whole operation isn't awkward, and soon they are both grinning at each other and slapping each other's backs. Nothing like surviving necro-slugs and other nasties together to make you feel at home.

"How was Orlais? How's Evie?" she asks, wondering if she can get away with getting breakfast with the rogue before the day's labor starts in earnest.

"Orlais was mostly a cockup" he says, and then quickly fills her in on the Chantry's reaction, and the bizarre behavior of the Templars. So. The military arm decided to punch the head that wielded it. Margo isn't entirely surprised. Military arms tend to do that every once in a while.

"Evie is doing well – the kid's starting to get into the swing of things. And she's so damn cute that everyone wants to just sort of… dote on her. So, as you've seen, we've picked up some volunteers." He gives her a sly look. "What do you think of our new troops?"

She tells him about her impressions of Iron Bull, Blackwall, and Sera. Varric chuckles at her telegraphic descriptions.

"You like the new mage?"

Margo shrugs.

"She's hoity toity, but if she's effective… I suppose that's all that matters. What do you think of her?"

"I think it's good that Chuckles will get a break every once in a while. Evie, though, seems to just adore our new Grande Dame – go figure." Another ironic look. "Speaking of Chuckles, have you seen him yet?"

Margo shakes her head.

"Well, do not let me keep you, then. And go catch up with the kid, too. I think she's been dying to tell someone all about Orlais fashion, and I'm afraid the Seeker isn't the best audience for that."

Margo tracks Evie down next, and finds her in the training grounds, looking like she is in the middle of a slightly awkward conversation with Commander Cullen. Margo briefly wonders what it's all about, and begins to make her way down towards them.

When Evie spots her, she emits a little squeal – to Cullen's somewhat flummoxed expression – and rushes over to greet her. Before Margo can say "oof", Evie's got her in a bear hug.

"You're Ok! You're really alright! Ahhh! I'm so happy! Solas's magic is amazing! You're amazing! You are fine now, right? I can hug you? It doesn't hurt?"

Margo grins, and returns the hug, and they do a sort of side to side shuffle as Evie practically vibrates with excitement.

"New perfume?" Margo asks, giving the kid a quick sniff. It smells fancy, and quite expensive, just the right balance of floral and spice.

"Yes! Margo, Val Royaux is incredible! You should have seen it! You would have loved the buildings, it's all these soaring structures, but they're delicate, not like we build in the Free Marches. And the shops, and there are these outdoor restaurants and people just sit outside and talk about literature, and the arts. And it's so warm!"

Margo smiles at her.

"Maybe next time? Anyway, you've been doing really well – good choice on Iron Bull and Blackwall. And Sera."

Evie beams.

"Yes! Iron Bull just sort of intimidates me, but actually, he's nice if you talk to him. And I like that he's straight forward. And Warden Blackwall is … well, Ok, he kind of intimidates me too, because the beard! But he's really polite, actually, and he seems like he really cares about helping people." Margo chokes down a laugh at Evie's description of the Warden as 'polite.' Although, come to think of it, he does code-switch remarkably well, depending on who he's talking to. "And Sera… well, Sera's a little odd, but I like her. I think. Though I can't always follow what she's saying because it's like all her sentences start with one thing, and end with another."

"And there's the Grand Enchantress… Enchanter?"

"Yes!" Evie breaks into a grin. "Isn't she amazing? She's just so… classy. Like, she's always so composed. And she never talks too much, and everything she says is just right. Unlike me." And at this, Evie giggles, and Margo is actually really pleased that the kid no longer seems to be self-conscious about her verbal mannerisms.

"I saw Varric. How did Cassandra and Solas do on the trip?"

Evie sighs.

"Cassandra's really worried and upset about the Templars, because Lord Seeker was a total… Asshat! Even though the Chantry was kinda rude too – anyway, everyone was very rude all around. And Solas… I think he sort of likes Val Royaux, but doesn't want to let on." She wrinkles her nose in amusement. "One morning, I spotted him go to this one really fancy bakery on the upper levels. But then when I asked him, he said something really vague, like he was just taking a walk and seeing the sights. But I think he's got a secret sweet tooth!"

Margo suppresses a chuckle – and really, hopes the warm and fuzzies don't have too obvious a physical manifestation – and winks at Evie. "I wouldn't be all that surprised" she volunteers.

Evie's face turns serious.

"You're going off on patrol tomorrow, right? I heard the Fallow Mire is really creepy. You have to be careful, alright?"

Margo nods, and pats the girl on the shoulder.

"Don't you worry about me. What about you, what's on your docket?"

At Evie's puzzled expression, Margo quickly rephrases. Right. Wrong colloquialism.

"I mean, what's your next step?"

Evie shrugs.

"I guess we're going to go to Redcliffe and speak with the mages. Cassandra thinks I could seal the breach if only we can channel enough power into the mark, so I guess getting the mages on board would make sense. Although… well, there's also the Templars, but I don't see how they'd even want to talk to us, all things considered. I think Commander Cullen would rather have the Templars though." Margo notices that Evie colors slightly at the mention of 'Commander Cullen.' Uh-oh. Someone might be harboring a little crush. "Do you… Do you happen to know why he hates mages so much? I mean… he really doesn't seem to like them. And… I don't know. Not all mages are bad, right? Solas isn't bad. And Vivienne isn't bad…"

There's something about Evie's downcast expression that makes Margo wonder why Cullen's apparent anti-mage attitude bothers her so much.

"I don't know, kiddo. You could just ask him. I'm sure he'd tell you."

Evie's eyes widen.

"Oh no, I couldn't possibly! What if it's really personal?"

Margo smiles.

"If it's really personal he'll either tell you as much, or he'll evade, but either way, you won't know until you try to find out."

Evie sighs.

"Yeah. I guess there's no point in coming up with fancy stories in my head about some kind of tragic past, right? It's probably nothing really big. Like, maybe a mage stole his puppy once, or something."

Margo nods encouragingly.

"Right. And even if it is serious, then you should find out too. You want to know about the people you're working with."

Evie nods, with new resolve.

"Alright. I'm going to talk to Cassandra about whom to take to Redcliffe, but you should get whoever doesn't want to come along to go with you, alright? Because this Fallow Mire sounds really yucky, and…"

Margo chuckles. It does sound yucky, the kid's absolutely right.

"Sounds good. But you make sure you have a good team with you, alright? See what Cassandra says."

"Come by and have some fancy Orlesian tea with me after, when we're all back?"

"I'd love to" And with this, they part with one more hug, and she trails back to the Apothecary.

As she passes by Solas's hut, she hesitates. He is not outside, and the door still seems bolted shut.

Her heart does a hard little thump, and Margo, with an unhappy little "hmpf", forces herself to walk on by, and into the Apothecary. She's not about to go running all around the camp looking for him. Never go running after an elf, or a bus, to paraphrase one of Baba's favorite sayings.

Master Adan is nowhere in sight, but there is a list the length of an arm (and also maybe part of a leg) on the worktable. There are potions for her to take along with them to the Mire including a batch of formulas that she identifies as anti-infection prophylactics. There are also potions to be made to service Haven's apparently ever expanding needs, and a whole range of lyrium-heavy preparations for Evie's mission to Redcliffe.

Right. No wonder Master Adan's in absentia. This is at least a day's worth of work.

She settles into it quickly, and soon enough the rhythm of the work absorbs all of her attention.

Which is why she doesn't notice when evening comes. And also why she doesn't hear the knock on the door the first time it happens.

She does hear the "Hello" though, and it startles the living daylights out of her. Margo whirls around, with a theatrical hand-to-her-heart gesture.

"Agh! You scared the Void out of me!"

The elf – because of course, who else would sneak up on her like he's floating around and not walking like normal flesh and blood creatures – smiles and extends what is probably meant to be a conciliatory offering. Margo looks at it suspiciously.

It's a small paper box.

"I had to keep them cool on the road, since our travels extended for longer than I had anticipated."

Margo blinks. There's something so delightfully pedestrian, yet eerie about the fact that he had to keep the damn pastries refrigerated, and likely did so with magic, that she breaks into a fit of completely undignified giggles. Solas raises an eyebrow at her, but he's also smiling, and he looks… pleased.

She takes the box from him, sets it on the desk, and then peels off her work gloves and puts a pot of water to boil.

"Well, don't just loom there, come sit. Tea?"

"No, thank you. But make it for yourself, by all means."

He settles into one of the chairs, and there is something so easy and companionable about the whole thing that Margo feels a brief, bitter-sweet little pang somewhere in the general region of her solar plexus.

"How did Orlais go?" she asks, while deciding which herb to use for an infusion.

"As well as one might have expected. The Chantry and Templars are too busy infighting to give us much thought, but the rebel mages in Redcliffe seem willing to talk."

Margo shoots him a surprised look. "These are the same rebel mages that are fighting with the Templars in the Hinterlands?" she asks.

"No. These are in fact organized. Or as organized as they can be under the circumstances."

Tea ready, Margo attempts to offer a cup to Solas, is met with another polite but firm refusal, and hands him a cup of hot water instead with a shrug. Maybe he's afraid the tea interferes with his beauty sleep. She settles across from him at the desk, and pries open the lid of the paper box. And then she grins up at him.

"Ahh! Macarons! Ok, not eclairs, but you found me macarons!" And she's practically dancing with excitement. Does this mean they have almonds in Thedas? Pistachios?

He's smiling, looking both pleased and surprised at this revelation. "You have something similar in your world?"

Margo is already extracting a pink one from the box, and popping the whole thing into her mouth. She nods as she chews. "Yup." It comes out a little muffled. "They are almost identical. Though I wouldn't have thought to put a spice into the filling. It's got a bit of a bite to it, yes?"

He nods. "I am quite fond of the spice, actually. It is a nice surprise against the sweetness of the dough, no?" He steals a green one from the box, and bites into it.

The next half a minute is spent chewing.

"Thank you. This was… thoughtful of you. I had partially been joking about dragging back baked goods all the way from Orlais." She does feel a little guilty about it, come to think of it.

The elf smiles. "To watch you enjoy them was certainly worth the effort. Ah… you have…" He gestures at her with his hand, but when she fails to interpret whatever meaning he's trying to convey, Solas leans in, and after a brief hesitation, sweeps his thumb along her lower lip. And then briefly pops it into his own mouth. "You had a crumb," he offers by way of explanation.

Margo, at that point, is blushing furiously. And of course, he notices, and gives her a faux innocent look. "You are slated to leave for the Fallow Mire tomorrow, are you not?"

That gets the warm and fuzzies to behave, and quickly. "Yes. I hear it's unpleasant."

The elf nods. "It is. Aside from the Avvar tribes, there has been an epidemic, with some… unusual effects. Which is why I am coming with you, provided the Herald is willing to spare me."

Margo looks at him in surprise. "Wouldn't you be needed in Redcliffe?"

Solas fishes another 'frilly cake' out of the box. "If anyone should go, it should be Grand Enchanter Vivienne. I believe she is… much better suited for the kind of politicking that will no doubt be required. And I have asked the Herald to give me a leave of absence for the next mission, now that we can afford it."

The whole prospect of traipsing through 'dead shit and Avvars' suddenly looks less bleak.

"There's the other matter, however," Solas suddenly adds, his face serious. "Your issue with your Fade visitor. We cannot leave this as is."

Margo looks at him then, wondering how much he suspects of what is going on. Their casual banter is easy and pleasant enough, but there is a complex conversation there, and one that feels like much of its implications are hidden from view, like an iceberg in dark waters.

"One thing is certain," she says, recalling the sticky horror of the imperfect doppelgänger. "It seems to have taken an interest."

Solas nods at this, gets up, and starts pacing. "One step is to give you your memories back. Although I fear this will no longer solve the larger problem, it is still the correct course of action, and will hopefully allow you to become less noticeable to other spirits."

It sounds from his tone that there are other steps to undertake, and Margo is eager to hear them. Whatever maximizes her chances against the demon. "Are there other things we might do?" she asks.

He takes a few more chaotic steps; settles back in the chair by the desk; looks at her; hesitates; and then he nods.

"There is…" As he pauses, reticent to arrive at whatever comes next, Margo watches him, the now familiar internal conflict plainly visible on his features. Except, this time, it seems much stronger than before – as if he is literally being torn into two opposite direction, his entire figure the embodiment of a deep but invisible rift. "There are," he corrects "two possible solutions."

She gestures that she is listening.

Solas gives her another one of his long, inscrutable looks, and then turns away, as if suddenly preoccupied with some arcane alchemical ingredient on the shelf. Margo doesn't think it's the bag of nug droppings that's got him so fascinated, though.

"First, you must know a little more about spirits. The nature of the Fade is different from the waking side. Unlike material beings, spirits are defined by what they are, and not by what they do. And yet, their essence is fragile, as the Fade responds to the waking world's intentions. Therefore, when a spirit is altered, it is not simply a correctable misstep. Its previous form dies, and what arises in its stead is different."

Margo frowns, as she tries to follow the trail of his explanation. So, for spirits, identity is defined not through behavior, but through something else – a kind of essence, like an imprint? "So what defines a spirit is a kind of fundamental intent, maybe? Or collection of intents?"

Solas's eyebrows shoot up, as if he hadn't expected her to arrive to this conclusion quite so easily, and then he nods once. "That is as close to the heart of it as is possible to explain, yes."

Interesting. Margo turns the new model in her head. This would mean that in the Fade, one would have a very different theory of mind, because presumably one could access intent directly if one knew where – or how - to look. "So how can one know to recognize this… defining intent?"

"Mages do this all the time when they transact with spirits. It is possible to be misled, of course, since the Fade helps the mind reconcile what it perceives as paradoxes. As you are not a mage, you cannot reach out to a spirit in quite the same way as I would. But I could reach out to you in such a way as to allow you to identify me with a degree of certainty."

A Fade caller ID. Perfect. "Excellent. This sounds like a solid approach to me."

His eyes flicker to her face, and she notices the tell-tale tightness in his jaw. "This… is not something I would wish to undertake lightly." The inscrutable look turns tortured around the edges, as if he's trying to will himself into an emotional shape that no longer fits him comfortably. "There is another, much simpler solution. And likely the wiser one." His features still into a polishes mask, and by this point Margo has a good idea of exactly where this is going, and she has absolutely no intention of making it easier for him. "Our… association. I do not wish for it to end in tragedy. It is not too late to step back. No harm has been done."

Margo shoots him what she hopes is her best 'skeptical academic' look. "Wait a second. Do you mean to tell me - after we just went over how the nature of spirits is something rooted in 'being' rather than 'doing' - that this ancient desire demon is going to simply desist because… why? We walk away from this?"

He frowns. "If there is nothing for it to exploit…" And at that moment, he looks to Margo almost as naïve as his unfinished utterance sounds.

"Oh, Solas." She smiles at him around a pang of sadness. "These things… don't work that way. At least not for me." And because she realizes that the route she's already taken with the elf is one of brutal intellectual honesty, she sees no reason to stop now. In for a penny… "I cannot simply rip this from under my skin, roots and all. And even if I could, what would remain… would not be the same as before. You pluck out a plant, and the disturbance it left stays behind." She looks at him, and his expression is intense, as if he is hanging on her every word, but beyond that, she cannot read him. She sighs. "If Imshael is a spirit that latches onto people's desires – broadly defined - then why would he change course? This is what he is. Would he not simply adapt his strategy, exploit whatever new opening arises?"

She leans forward.

"Solas, that thing knows me like … It seems to understand every little nuance. Or insecurity. I'm not even sure that it is evil, in the simplest sense of the term. It almost feels like it wants what anyone wants: that its 'victim', if that is the appropriate term, actually make the choice with full awareness." She pauses, trying to formulate her thoughts without devolving into moral absolutes. "I don't even know if its… toying is meant maliciously. That it would harm me, in the end, isn't necessarily its purpose, but that doesn't change the likely outcome." She looks at her hands then, not quite sure she wants to meet his gaze. "And I think it's learning. If something isn't done, one day I might not be able to tell the difference – to know it from you."

She looks at him. And then, there is a change in his expression, as if a crucial insight finally dawns on him. "And since you do not have full control of yourself in the Fade… If we…" Solas pauses. Swallows. "There might be a time when you might not want to draw that distinction," he concludes, expression utterly horrified. "Oh, da'nas." He looks almost pleading. "With enough time, perhaps it will lose interest." He stops. And then almost whispers. "Or you will."

Margo exhales quietly, trying to slow down her rushing heartbeat. She doesn't have 'enough time.' But she can't force him. If this is what will help him sleep better at night, then she supposes she can't fault him.

"Is this what you want? To walk away? In all honesty."

He meets her gaze. Opens his mouth to respond. Hesitates. And then looks like he's being ripped asunder from the inside, and Margo feels for him, but does not retract her question, or try to sway him one way or another. That decision does not belong to her.

"No." Barely a breath. "It is what I should want." And then, a lot firmer. "However, it is not."

She looks at him then, and catches an almost rueful, surprised expression, like he's suddenly realizing that his mouth is not fully following orders from headquarters. But then he regroups, and nods.

"We will take the other route for now, then. But I must meet you in the Fade for that."

Margo takes up the task of studying her hands. Because she has one more request, and they are not out of tricky water, as far as she can tell. One iceberg, coming right up.

"Solas, I do not trust myself in the Fade right now. I have some facility entering it, but very little control. Dreams always seem to help the mind gloss over the paradoxes and contradictions, as you said earlier." She takes a breath, exhales, and still feels like she's about to have a fit of the vapors at the prospect of coming out and saying it. "I would want an added layer of security, as it were."

"What are you asking, lethallan?" And when she checks his expression, she almost laughs, because he truly doesn't look like he has the slightest idea.

"For you to be able to wake me up if something goes wrong."

He seems confused at that. "I can easily wake us both from the Fade…"

She shakes her head then, and almost groans. She's being a child again. This shouldn't be so difficult. "Not if I get lost somewhere. You need to be able to wake me up from this side too."

Ah, it dawns on him. Solas looks… flummoxed? A little scandalized? Plain old nervous? She's not sure…

"Didn't you mention you sleep in old ruins? Am I seriously a worse alternative to giant spiders?"

That gets him out of his embarrassment, and he's chuckling again. "If you leave something for the spiders, they will usually leave you alone…" he trails, and it's definitely… playful. So they somehow managed to get into safer emotional waters.

"Should have gotten me more pastries, then" she opines.

He looks out of the window. "If we are to do this, I would prefer not to be interrupted by your inebriated mentor and Enchanter Minaeve's questionable alchemical experiments. Or whatever else they do."

Margo grins. So, she was pretty sure that Adan and Minaeve were an item. Always fun when your suspicions are shared.

"Come, then. It is late, and I suspect tomorrow's departure will be an early one."

The butterflies in her stomach make a roaring come back. She tells them to go flitter somewhere else, pulls on her boots, and follows the elf out of the Apothecary.


	15. Chapter 15: Strange Bedfellows

The house is still chilly from lack of regular heating over the last two weeks, so she helps him get the fireplace started. Solas is oddly quiet, but the silence isn't altogether oppressive, just a tad tense.

"Would you like the outside, or the wall side?"

Margo startles at the unexpected question, but it is, once again, so pedestrian that she ends up snickering, despite herself. Then she schools her face into a more or less neutral expression. This is a little awkward, and probably not just for her.

"I personally like the wall side, but whatever you're more comfortable with. It's your bed. You call the shots."

And then she realizes that, yet again, this sounds rather ambiguous, and pretends to be fascinated with a really ugly painting on the wall. Seriously, who is that shriveled up, comically evil looking dude? And who on earth thought of painting him? And why is there a portrait of him in every other house in Haven?

"Is that an offer?" he asks quietly, and the joke sounds like it's only maybe three quarters one.

Margo clears her throat, because at that point, she is too busy wrangling the warm and fuzzies to give a coherent answer.

"With few exceptions" she offers finally. And that too, sounds like maybe only three quarters a joke.

"Such as?"

Of course, he'd go there.

"No tickling" Margo states firmly.

At length, procrastinating with the fireplace is no longer a tenable strategy. Margo pulls off her jacket, with an intense sense of déjà vu, and hangs it on the back of a chair. Solas makes a casual little gesture that seems to mean "make yourself at home," and she settles herself all the way against the wall. He gathers a thin woolen blanket from a shelf, hesitates, then sort of gingerly lays down next to her, looking every bit as uncomfortable as one might expect considering their "strange bedfellows" predicament.

Margo takes the blanket from him, and stretches it over them both, because frankly, the fucking hut is colder than the lowest circles of hell, even with the fireplace going, and there's no way she can fall asleep under these conditions.

There is another few minutes of very awkward bed sharing. And then Margo decides that this is just plain silly – and she really is inhumanly cold anyway – and maneuvers herself to snuggle up against the elf. He stills, and then, tentatively, turns towards her. She looks up, and his expression is so uncertain it makes her want to giggle.

But then he gathers her close.

She inhales. He smells strongly of ozone, and faintly of wood smoke and pine.

"Sleep, heart" he whispers into her hair. And so, she closes her eyes, and before she knows it, they are both in the Fade.

It looks like she's the one setting the décor of the dream, because they are back to the field of wild summer grasses, and she watches Solas inhale with obvious pleasure. The meadow smells of sagewort and honeysuckle, of hot earth and distant thunderstorms.

"You have such a… sensory way of dreaming, da'nas" he comments.

That's curious. She has wondered before at the strong textures of her Fade dreams – even though the setting is so often familiar, the subtle details do seem richer than in her 'old' dreamworld.

"Should we start with the memories, then?"

He nods.

It is similar to their original ill-fated ritual, but from this side, everything is much easier. They stand side by side, as he molds the dream to reenact the lost fragments of her past.

Solas smiles as they watch her PhD advisor hand her former dark-haired avatar his book. "You have remained a scholar" he comments, approvingly.

She blushes through her first kiss, because, of course, at this age – and seen from a third person perspective – it looks so damn awkward. She shoots her companion a quick glance, but he has a rather fond smile on his face. "A lucky boy. I wonder if he knew that" he says, his face in profile. And then his expression becomes serious, and he takes hold of her hand.

The scenery changes.

They watch.

A young marriage – Heavens, were they really that young? Barely kids themselves, about Evie's age. They didn't feel young at the time. She looks at Ivan, a simple, plain, handsome face that has somehow faded from her memory over the years. He is all kinds of serious and ready to tackle life. A baby. Pure joy on Baba's face as she holds the swaddled bundle. Lots of knitting of baby socks, and baby hats, and ridiculous fuzzy blankets with comical animals. And then the doctor visits. First steps. First words. Sleepless nights. As it unfolds, the memory clicks into a place inside her she didn't know was vacant. A diagnosis, then another. Writing term papers by the light of a single gas lamp. Second opinions, and third ones. A congenital condition, rare, with no research behind it, and no support in their rural area – a periphery of a periphery. The specialized hospital is a far ride, on bad roads. They do it anyway, over and over and over. Finances stretch - two students' pittances. And then snap. And, inevitable in the end, a little grave, and fresh hyacinth flowers because they were Lily's favorites, what with their 'yummy smell.' "Forgive me, my soul" Baba, rocking her shaking, sobbing form back and forth. Baba who herself has buried all but one of her children. "Sometimes, when they really want to fly, even the little herbs can't hold them down." Ivan, drinking, drifting. Screaming in her face in blind, enraged helplessness. Drinking more. Hollowing out. Packing for the city, a different life with no reminders. Gone. And then, as if it is happening to someone else, a letter of acceptance into a graduate program, a continent away.

By that point, she is sobbing, of course, and is also vaguely shocked that Solas has carried this for her, in all its precious, wrenching details, without spilling a single drop. The memory fits perfectly. And then she is pressed against his chest, the elf's arms around her, and he is whispering something in Elvhen into her hair, but her inherited linguistic knowledge doesn't stretch far enough to interpret the words.

Margo rubs the tears away, and then, rather gracelessly, wipes the snot off with her sleeve, but at this point, details, right?

"Thank you. For carrying this for me."

He nods solemnly.

They finish the other memories – most of them simpler, shorter, and bitter-sweet. By the end of it, she feels different – not exactly whole or complete, but sort of filled in, like a piece of Emmental cheese that got turned into something denser, and with fewer bubbles.

She looks at her companion, but he seems calm, a careful guide. Virgil to her Dante, once again.

"Is this tiring?" she asks.

"No. These memories wanted to go to the source. It was an easy process."

She notices his hesitation.

"You're not so sure about the next step, though, are you?"

He looks at her then.

"It…" He clears his throat. Tries again. "It is not part of normal interaction outside of the Fade, and I have never attempted it with someone who is not fully a spirit."

Margo notices the careful way he phrased that, and frowns. She supposes this isn't an incorrect way of mapping her – neither fully this, nor that.

"But you are right, this is the only way to ensure that Imshael doesn't… confuse you. And perhaps…"

He doesn't finish the sentence, and she doesn't press, sorely tempted as she might be. He shakes his head, firmly, and then turns to her.

"Let us."

Margo nods, anxiety pooling in the pit of her stomach. This better not backfire spectacularly. Fucking rituals. She hates rituals. A pox on all of them.

Solas rests his hands on the sides of her neck, fingers gentle and a little cool on her nape, and brings their foreheads together.

"I believe it would be easier if you close your eyes."

She does.

At first, there is nothing. But then… a strange echo, though not one she hears with her ears. Like the ephemeral apprehension of, say, a plant's flavor as the window to its pharmaceutical potency, to knowing its very nature. This is similar, though perceived through a sense Margo can't quite identify, let alone localize. A whirlwind of impressions, fleeting, and hard to commit to memory, yet immediately recognizable once encountered anew – pride; sorrow; anger, ancient and scabbed over. An abstract, complicated, wistful kind of empathy that is almost too painful to endure. Humor. Curiosity. A quiet, contemplative resignation. And underneath it all a profound loneliness that knows no name or solution.

"Oh" she gasps, eyes flying open. "Solas… " But behind the swirl of qualia that make up his essence, something else…

The realization crashes into her like a freight train, though what the hell does any of it mean, exactly? But there is something there, she's sure of it, an intimate, familiar kind of mismatch.

As if he's not quite of his body either, though it fits him better than hers does.

And then, something beneath it all, lurking in the shadows.

She peers into his eyes, trying to catch the fleeting insight before it vanishes, and suddenly realizes that they are standing very very close to each other.

"Are you… Wait, I almost had it, are you…"

But before she can quite capture the idea, a kind of anxious anguish flashes across his features, and then he covers her mouth with his, and she loses her train of thought.

The kiss is soft, and sweet, and a little out of practice.

At first.

After a few long moments, he pulls away, and the echoes of another private internal struggle play out on his face, one more invisible battle fought and lost.

"Would you know me now, da'nas?" he asks, voice a little rough, and she can't help but wonder at the polyvalence of the question, like he is asking several complicated things at once, and not just whether she might be able to tell him apart from Imshael.

"Always" she replies around a lump in her throat.

And then, with an impatient little sound that bears a suspicious resemblance to a growl, he pulls her against him and dips her into another kiss, and this one is deep, and greedy, and with absolutely nothing unpracticed about it.

And it also settles her curiosity about whether or not he might be ok with tongue.

Eventually, they come apart again, but this time, it is much harder to slow down the momentum. She watches as his expression takes on a distinctly regretful cast, even though his eyes keep returning to her lips.

"I… Forgive me. It was impulsive. I shound not have …"

"I know exactly what you're up to, elf" she exhales, still trying to catch her breath.

Whatever stormy, self-tortured trajectory he was embarking on, it is replaced by a confused frown.

"Oh?"

She wags a finger at him.

"One should not use kisses as a distracting tactic."

"Hmm. Ah… Why not? Does it not work?" And now, there is definitely humor in the question. But also genuine, slightly vexed curiosity, and she has to suppress a fit of impending giggles.

She shoots him a narrowed-eye look instead.

"Of course it works." He looks… well, quite pleased with himself, she supposes. "However" she lifts a finger. "This is a temporary solution at best."

The elf, damn him, smirks cheekily – but at least he's forgotten about his earlier intent to back-pedal in panic. After a second hesitation, he lets his arms encircle her waist, and then tugs her back against himself.

"Perhaps for the effects to take hold it requires repetition?"

She's about to answer, when the world shudders, and careens out of view.

With a jolt, Margo opens her eyes. Only to come face to face with the aforementioned elf.

"Well? Does it?" he asks, and then, with a motion that has no right to be quite this effortless, scoops her up and rolls her over him. Ah, it's like that, is it? Margo lifts up on her forearms to get a better look at him.

"Isn't this way better than a giant spider?"

She feels his chuckle against her ribcage.

"Hmm. Perhaps." His hands, at this point, are set on a tentatively exploratory path down her back.

"Oh, really? If there's something you want to share about that, now's the time."

A loud banging on the door shakes the hut to its foundations. It sounds distinctly impatient. Aha. So that's what woke them up in the first place. She's going to kill whoever it is. Although, judging by Solas's expression, he might beat her to it.

"Come on, you two."

You two? Uh-oh. Varric. Well, Margo supposes it could have been worse. Could have been Cassandra. Now that would have been awkward.

"Prickly, if you're in there – and if I were a betting man, I'd say you are – you really want to report to Leliana right about now. Something went tits up in the Mire. Again. They're looking for you everywhere, the patrol has to leave right away." The sound of creaking snow, and a soft curse that involves 'Maker's hairy balls,' 'elves,' and some kind of comparison to 'nugs.' Whatever it is, it causes Solas to color and gently roll her back to the mattress with an embarrassed kind of groan. Margo concludes that 'nugs' are the equivalent of 'rabbits' and that Varric has logically arrived to a rather Malthusian conclusion. "You can take Chuckles with you, just… we gotta get moving.


	16. Chapter 16: Bog Standard

"Andraste's Silky Knickers, I have no idea why places like this exist. This shit's ruining my boots," Varric grumbles, scraping off an unidentified stinky mess from his sole.

"It is… awful." Cassandra is crouching next to a make-shift fire pit that just won't catch in the constant freezing drizzle despite her best efforts.

They have been in the God-forsaken bog that Margo re-christened "The Foul Mire" for less than a day, and it's already enough for a lifetime. Possibly several.

The dwarf spends a few seconds observing Cassandra's attempts to ignite the little pile of damp kindling with an expression of truly epic disgust. Then, with a theatrical sigh, he begins to make a shelter for the fire pit out of some sticks and tent felt.

"How'd you even end up with us, Seeker? I thought you'd be going to Redcliffe with the Herald. Where it's nice, warm, and doesn't rain corpses."

"I… Blackwall and Iron bull convinced me that we should make the selection of assignments more equitable."

That gets Varric chortling. "They made you draw straws, didn't they?"

"Yes." Delivered with the righteous indignation of the unjustly maligned.

"What about you, Chuckles, how'd you get stuck with this?"

Margo glances up from her work. Varric is giving Solas, who is crouching under the meager shelter of a rocky overhang, a rather amused look. "Wrong place, wrong time?"

"It would appear so," the elf responds dryly before returning to the task of gazing abstractly off into the distance.

Margo sighs, and focuses her attention on peeling blood lotus. Of course they are all in a foul mood, but this is becoming a tad ridiculous. If one only considers the horrid, stinky, sticky mess of the mire, the constant rain, and the bone-deep chill that feels like it belongs in a crypt, this would already make for a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Add to this the fact that the place is crawling with not just dead, but undead shit, and that she has to examine said undead shit after it's been laid to rest (or, more likely, a nap) to bring "samples" back to Enchanter Minaeve (may she contract an embarrassing skin disease), and you get thoroughly unpleasant on steroids. And to top it all off, the elf, nothing if not mercurial, has apparently decided to backtrack in terror-stricken panic and is …

What is he doing, anyway?

It isn't exactly that he is ignoring her or giving her the cold shoulder. Margo huddles deeper into her coat, trying to regain at least a bit of warmth. Rather, he is being studiously formal. Pleasantly formal, but formal nonetheless. As well as assiduously avoiding all eye contact.

And to add insult to injury, Varric has decided - with truly enviable systematicity - to make innuendo-laden remarks, to which Solas responds with caustic irritation. So, by and large, all of this is miles away from where they seemed to have landed a few days ago.

Kiss? What kiss. No such thing.

It shouldn't chafe quite this much, and Margo scolds herself for taking it so personally – and then scolds herself for scolding herself because it is entirely unrealistic to think you can pull a Munchausen and extract yourself by your own bootstraps out of an emotional entanglement. And she should know better. She saw it coming, really, the second it had become clear that Varric was onto them, and had made erroneous, though not altogether unfounded assumptions.

Never run after an elf, or a bus. Baba's wise suggestion should, apparently, be extended to the undead. Because a) the undead will run after you, and b) there really will be another undead if you wait five minutes, and it's going to bring its buddies with it.

Margo stares at the reeds. More blood lotus means more fire grenades. More fire grenades means more roasted undead. Since roasted undead are preferable to undercooked undead – as those tend to run around and shoot rotten, squishy arrows at you – peeling blood lotus is a task that benefits all living beings. (Undead excluded.) Right. She's got a job to do, which does not involve uselessly expending emotional effort on something that may or may not be a… something. Since calling it a 'relationship' at this stage would be a vast hyperbole, 'something' will have to do.

Well, at least no Avvars so far. There's that.

"Does it not feel like they've been gone for a long time?" Cassandra has finally managed to start the fire, and the trio huddles closer to the flames. Margo takes a portion of the peeled reeds, makes her way to the fire pit, and begins to pull the fibers apart into a travel-sized cast-iron pot.

"Don't worry, Seeker. Scout Harding will be back with dinner before you know it."

"That… actually worries me." Cassandra answers. "I am not sure what would be considered edible in this Maker forsaken marsh."

As if the words summoned them, Margo hears quiet, squishy footsteps a few seconds before Harding and Jan emerge with a mid-sized animal carcass. The creature in question looks like the product of a night of passion between a pig and an armadillo.

They plop it down a few yards from the pit, and Harding digs into it with her knife with quick efficiency. Jan makes his way to the fire, crouches by Margo, picks a peeled reed from the pot, and sniffs it.

"Is it true? This stuff will make you see things? And it explodes?"

Margo plucks the reed back. "The flowers, in high concentration, are apparently hallucinogenic." If the little anecdote about some Orlesian Chamberlain in Auntie's book is true, and not simply an apocryphal story about the decadent stupidity of courtiers. "The stems do extract into something that'll blow up. Nifty little herb, hmm?"

"Wait, wait…" That's Varric. "Is that the one where the Orlesian noblewoman tried to take a bite out of a statue? That was blood lotus?"

She nods.

Varric's expression slowly morphs from speculative to alarmingly tricky.

"You know, Prickly, it just occurred to me… I might need a consult. I'm thinking of incorporating a subplot into a story I'm writing, and I need an alchemist's opinion."

Oh no. This cannot possibly go anywhere good.

"You are writing a new story? Is it… a sequel to an existing story?" Cassandra looks like she's trying very hard – and utterly failing – to broadcast polite but neutral interest. Hmm. Margo wonders which of Varric's books she is hooked on. Perhaps the crime series? Apparently, that one is quite popular, and Margo has been considering procuring it for herself.

"Sadly, no, Seeker. My editor's pushing me to do another romance serial, though honestly it's not really my genre."

Margo notices that Cassandra seems to get a little flustered at this, and she shoots Solas a quick glance, just to see if he noticed as well. Their eyes meet briefly – apparently he had a similar thought - but he quickly averts his gaze.

With a neutrally pleasant expression.

"That would be… very interesting. I am sure there would be an audience for that in Orlais." Cassandra sounds… so hopeful. Is this possible? Margo blinks. The warrior princes likes her romance novels?

"The problem, Seeker" and at this Varric casts Margo a sarcastic little glance "is that she wants me to try my hand at the really trashy stuff. You know, the stuff that the Rowdy Dowager likes to review. There's a huge market for it, I'm told."

This time Margo's pretty sure Cassandra blushes. Solas suffers a sudden coughing fit. Jan grins.

What is this business with the Rowdy Dowager exactly? Wait… Does Varric write erotica?

"So. Prickly. I'm not one to disappoint my editor, and I need a plot that sells. So I was thinking – a torrid affair between a young alchemist and a mage, set against the backdrop of some cataclysmic event."

"The mage is a secret Tevinter agent, right?" Jan chortles with a pretty suggestive wink at Margo.

Varric adopts a thoughtful expression that, to Margo, seems about as real as a shopping mall Santa.

At this point, she has a good idea about where this train is headed, and is carefully avoiding looking in Solas's direction. Right. She is going to kill the dwarf. Put rashvine into his boots.

"Well, I hear elf stories are really popular these days. Elfie shit sells like hot cakes, I believe were my editor's words. So I'm thinking, spunky female protagonist, and the male love interest is an elusive, brooding elven apostate – because who doesn't like a broody elf, right? But my editor – terrifying woman, runs a whole Coterie by herself – tells me that the genre doesn't call for much – plot - as it were. So here I am, supposed to make them fall into bed together in the first chapter. But I'm a writer, not a miracle worker, and I do have a reputation to uphold. So I need some kind of… device. Hence the consult, Prickly. As our resident alchemist, give me a plausible alchemical formula to speed up the process. I was going to ask Adan, but thought you might have a better idea."

Oh hell on a stick, the ironies just never cease.

"But wait… Varric. That would be… terrible! There would be no… anticipation! No mounting tension!" That's Cassandra, sounding truly scandalized by the demands of the genre.

Margo, at this point, would very much like to be swallowed into the earth. Undead or not.

"Oh, I don't know." Harding is done with the carcass, and is depositing chunks of fresh meat and some kind of bulbous roots into a stew pot. "I don't always mind it when it skips to the chase. Varric, did you say it's set against some kind of catastrophe? I've actually seen it happen sometimes. War's war. People don't always have the luxury for a long courtship. Sometimes you just need to get it out of your system. You might be dead tomorrow."

"But why do they ingest the draught in the first place?" That's Cassandra again, not satisfied with the proposed plot device, her brow furrowed in skeptical puzzlement. "Oh! Does the alchemist seduce the mage, and slip the draught to him in secret? Or is it an accident? Or perhaps they both drink it?"

Margo succumbs to temptation, and steals a quick look at the elf. He is apparently utterly fascinated with some twig on the ground. And is definitely looking a little flushed – and not a little thunderous.

She cocks an eyebrow at the dwarf, which she hopes conveys the heartfelt " _really?!_ " she is making every effort not to express verbally. Varric looks unrepentant. She sighs. The easiest solution is to probably play along. She extracts Auntie's compendium – the copy now well-worn and dog-eared – from her coat pocket.

"I don't suppose a simple stamina potion would be enough for your purposes?"

Varric chuckles. Solas has another coughing fit. Cassandra makes a noise that could, quite possibly, be a stifled giggle.

"No, but that gives me an idea about how to solve the, shall we say, frequency problem. I am working with a fixed word count after all."

She leafs through the tome. Auntie really needs a better index – perhaps this is something she could take up in her spare time. If she ever has spare time between making grenades, roasting the living dead, and fielding nosy provocations from evil dwarfs.

"Let me think for a second."

"Alright, Prickly, while you think… Solas, what about you? As the resident apostate. What might make our mage throw caution to the wind?"

Margo looks up from her book, and notices identically curious expressions on both Cassandra's and Scout Harding's faces. Varric's got them right where he wants them.

Solas clears his throat, but manages to remain admirably composed.

"Perhaps the mage has a brief lapse in judgement? An ill-considered and impulsive reaction, brought on by ... some external danger. But I am not much of a storyteller, Varric. I fear that my interpretation of the situation you describe would not lend itself easily to serialization. The story would end too quickly and not well."

Oh really? Margo bristles. It certainly didn't feel like a "lapse in judgement" at the time. Or something that would turn into a "short story." Or "end too quickly," thank you very much.

Varric's adopts a surprised expression.

"Oh-ho-ho, I see! You're saying the mage has some misgivings! Well, this would certainly work well with the broody theme. You know, I actually knew an elf like that once. Not a mage, though…"

"But maybe the mage cannot resist despite himself!" Cassandra beams. "Then you could have mounting tension and still meet your editor's demands. This could still make for a wonderful romance serial, Varric."

"Truly? And what about you, Seeker? Would you read it?"

Cassandra definitely flushes. "I… Ah…Well, none of us have much spare time to read these days."

Fortunately for Margo, the stew is ready, and the conversation switches from "literary" matters to more pragmatic ones – what the Avvar might want, whether the epidemic in the Mire is caused by the undead, or is their cause, and what is happening with the influx of demons.

Solas manages to avoid her gaze the entire time.

She settles into the first sentry shift with Jan. Unpleasant, squishy, crunchy sounds keep floating from the darkness over the bog, as if something large and casually hungry is milling around, gnawing on old bones, and then sucking out the marrow.

Come to think of it, it probably is.

Margo realizes how exhausted she is because she keeps fading away, and then startling herself awake with a jerk. It's through one of those episodic cycles that she hears Jan slowly stand up on the other side of the camp fire. She glances in his direction. He is peering into the darkness, a hand on the hilt of a dagger.

"Something's out there" he says quietly.

The sound is faint – not much more than the irregular drip of water - but something about the quality of the darkness is different. It feels… watchful.

They are both so focused on the sound ahead that neither notices the subtle movements on the sides of the camp. The Avvar – and that's what Margo assumes the painted, strange-looking warriors are for the split second that one is caught in the glow of the fire – flicker by like shadows, absolutely noiseless.

"Look out!" Jan bellows, in an effort to wake up the others. After that, everything happens so fast that later, in retrospect, Margo is unable to quite parse the sequence of events. She fumbles for a grenade. Jan draws his daggers, and is immediately assaulted by three warriors – two females, and one male – with faces painted to look like skulls. Cassandra and Harding are already standing, Varric and Solas slightly slower, but still right behind them, all in fighting stances, peering into the night. But it seems that the shadowy warriors are not, in fact, interested in a direct confrontation. Hands grab at her from the darkness, and before she can react, she is jerked forward. On instinct, she kicks out, dodges another set of hands, but after the faint glow of the fire, her eyes are having trouble adjusting and she can't see her attackers – only intuit them in their movements. She fights blind, trying to make use of her last two weeks of daily training, but it doesn't cut it. Behind, she hears the sounds of a skirmish, but it's all she can do to keep herself from being overpowered.

Something shoves her in the back with ferocious force, and she crashes against another figure – someone giant in a bluish, leathery armor, and then there is a sack on her head, and a sharp prick in her neck.

She has the sensation of falling into a pit while simultaneously flying up a chimney. Before she loses consciousness, she hears Harding call out to her and Jan, but it's faint and as if from very far away.

And then, darkness.

Margo wakes up on a damp stone floor. The room is pitch black, safe for a faint square of night sky about twenty feet above. She tries to move. Her arms appear to be tied in front – so that's a win, better than tied at the back – but then she discovers that one of her legs is wedged into something that feels like a stirrup, and secured to a wall. Her range of movement does not exceed a radius of three feet.

"Jan?"

There is no answer at first, and then a faint kind of sound, to the right of her. She crawls over, the best she can, and reaches out with her hands, trying to locate its source.

As her eyes adjust, she can make out the outline of a supine shape. She recognizes the rogue by his armor – and mop of black hair. The guy does have great hair, she'll give him that.

"Are you alright?" Margo asks, trying to locate any visible injuries.

He doesn't respond. She feels for a pulse, and then puts her hand on his forehead. The skin is hot and clammy to the touch, and the pulse is thready and fast. Ah, shit. Some kind of infection – either from a wound she can't see, or because he ended up contracting whatever crap killed all the peasants.

She crawls back, trying to get a better sense of the room they're locked in. It's narrow, judging by the way the sounds travel, but with a very high ceiling. There's nothing but damp stone, and some filthy, slimy rags in the corner. And a stinky bucket.

So, apparently the Avvar wanted them as prisoners – but to what end? Are there more of the Inquisition's people here? There were other soldiers who had disappeared – had they also been victims of kidnapping? But, once again, to what purpose? Ransom? Some kind of bargain?

Culinary intentions?

She closes her eyes, head still swimming from whatever poison they used to knock her out. She'd have to remember to ask for the formula if someone comes by. Not that Margo thinks there is much chance that anyone would tell her, of course, or that she is going to have the opportunity to deploy it in the future. Though, she's not dead yet, so that might pass for today's good news.

At length, she relaxes her back against the stone wall, listening to the drip of water outside the cell. It seems that they are in some kind of castle or keep, though it is oddly quiet – no din of soldiers, no clanking of metal from a training grounds or a forge.

Eventually, she drifts off.

She opens her eyes in Haven's bath house. The space is warm, and clean, and Margo sighs in immense relief – she must have nodded off for a second while resting on one of the bunks, trying to get herself warm. She's been chilled to the bone lately, and it feels like there's no getting the cold out.

She's wrapped in a towel, her hair still wet from recently washing it, so she settles back on the bench, and pours some more water onto the hot stones, letting the steam waft up, warm against her skin.

"Hello, da'elgar."

She startles, and looks up. Solas.

Except, of course, not actually Solas. First, because she realizes that the actually existing Solas has long since switched the terms – not 'da'elgar,' "little spirit," but 'da'nas', "little soul" – and hasn't used the other appellation for some time. But also, because the presence feels different, even though the imitation is objectively closer than she's ever seen it.

"Ah, I see you got the wolf to teach you a new trick. Clever, clever girl."

Non-Solas walks a circle around her, hands clasped behind its back, the floating, gliding stride a masterful copy.

"Where do you think he might be, that wolf of yours?"

Margo clenches her teeth, trying to stop the tremor. She feels naked, and vulnerable, and absolutely out of her fucking depth – first, because she is in fact, practically naked, and has no idea what sort of defensive moves might even work against a desire demon, and second because even though the thing that looks like Solas talks with his voice, and in his tone, she now can intuit the contours of the entity beneath the mask. Because it has, in fact, stopped imitating Solas's speech patterns.

And it does sound evil, with a capital E.

"Do you not find it amusing that it is I who always seem to visit when you call? But of course, you must realize that your little rendez-vous in the Fade are always on the wolf's terms, yes? It is not as if you could summon him."

It smiles at her, pleasantly, and takes a seat next to her on the bench.

"I was perfectly happy enjoying my bath dream before you interrupted. Now scat." And it would have sounded wonderfully biting, if her teeth weren't also chattering.

"Yes, I would imagine you were, little spirit. A difficult thing being locked in an Avvar cell with a dying friend, no food, and no prospect for escape or rescue. I doubt your friends are coming. You heard your wolf – what did he say? A mistaken dalliance? A brief moment of weakness? Wouldn't it all be much easier for him if you just – ah. I don't know. Went away?"

Margo narrows her eyes. It is not, in fact, what Solas had said. The thing is twisting it around, fishing out her own reinterpretations. Amplifying her fears. Does it hurt? Naturally. But, also, good to know the mechanism. She files it away for later.

If there is a later.

Non-Solas turns, straddles the bench, inches a little closer to her, and then reaches for her braid and begins to slowly take it apart, fingers perversely gentle – and cold as ice - against the bare skin of her shoulder. Margo forces herself not to flinch away in revulsion.

"You and I have started off on the wrong foot, don't you think? Or, no, that is not true. We started off on a perfectly right foot the first time around, with your mentor's little draught." It winks at her. "But then I think we took a wrong turn." Another lock of hair carefully separated out of the braid, and laid against her naked back.

"Let me make it up to you," it says, and smiles, and the smile is such a perfect imitation of the actual Solas's occasionally rueful smirk that Margo feels the coordinates of her world shift from their axis. A wave of nausea washes over her. "This one will be for free – a sign of my goodwill. Something neutral, maybe, that will help you talk your way out of your predicament. And who knows, maybe save your friend? What is that word you use… ah, yes. Some 'ethnographic' information about the Avvar. How does it sound?"

"No." It's all she can say, really. "Scat."

The Non-Solas thing chuckles, sounding just about delighted by all this.

"Oh, my sweet stranded little spirit, what a stubborn wee thing you are! You know, I think you are misinterpreting my intent. I do not wish to force you into anything. I am, after all, a choice spirit. The choice, as they say, is yours. But…" Another strand of hair being carefully detangled. "Consider this. The dance with the wolf, it will take a lot from you, will it not? It's always one step forward two steps back with him. All that… emotional labor! All that uncertainty! You give and you give… And what do you get in return? It is always like that, isn't it?" It clucks sympathetically. "When really, what you are asking for, it is so simple! Someone to talk to as an equal. Someone to guide you through this unfamiliar world of ours. Someone to offer comfort when comfort is needed, yes? Simple, sweet things, hmm?" It strokes her now detangled hair. "A little of this, a little of that… You see, I can offer you a much more… quid pro quo arrangement."

"What the hell do you want from me?" Margo snaps.

It smiles gently, and a little wistfully, in perfect mimicry. "Perhaps I simply enjoy your company. Is that so farfetched? Has the wolf damaged you already that such a thing would be unimaginable?"

"Oh for fuck's sake, at least don't insult my intelligence! And quit treating me like a love-sick puppy, it will gain you no points." Margo decides that she's had it with this cosmic asshole. "I know you want something. Out with it."

The Non-Solas thing chuckles, thoroughly entertained.

"Ah, there we go, what a lovely question! Was that so hard? But I see now that I have been offering you the wrong thing. Too abstract, yes? Clever little girl, feels just like a spirit, could have fooled me." The thing's eyes – which, of course, are Solas's – go unfocused, as if he is peering through her like through a pane of opaque glass.

"Always wants to know the answer hidden underneath the others. The kiss was real, so why the panic? Would rather know and hurt, than wonder. Knows well the taste of bitter roots."

The thing that is not Solas looks up at her, and its expression is full of tender, utterly believable compassion. It is the most terrifying thing she has ever seen.

"Of course, ma da'elgar, you would want to know why he's turned away. I can tell you that. It would cost you almost nothing. A trifle, no more."

Oh no no no fucking way. But for a split second, the thought crosses her mind, and icy terror scuttles down the back of her spine.

"Well? Would you trade me for it? Lets say… something small, nothing too personal. Not, like, a memory, say. Not knowledge. Something that's not even yours to give, really. A kiss? Yes. The wolf got one. I would like one as well."

And then, the door to the bath house flies open with a gust of icy wind, and a giant fellow in bluish armor and with a truly impressive mane of white dreadlocks ambles in, and declares, in a thickly accented baritone:

"Come, lowlander. You shouldn't be talking to that one."

Margo wakes up.


	17. Chapter 17: Prison Blues

She sits on the freezing floor and waits in dull, vague terror. Time crawls, or flies, she can't tell. Later - could be ten minutes or an hour, or three, for all she knows - the darkness of the cell is split by a sharp shaft of light that expands into a door-shaped rectangle, and Margo squints against the glare. A large, humanoid figure is looming in the opening, and even though she can't make out its features, she is pretty sure it's the same visitor as the one that interrupted Imshael's intrusion into her dream.

At the thought of the demon, Margo shudders with a mix of loathing and mortification. It feels… dirty, somehow, like she is the one who did something stupid, and now has to live with the consequences. Like… a drunken, embarrassing one night stand with a creepy and likely dangerous stranger.

What the hell does that thing want from her? Doesn't it have other people to harass?

In the meantime, the white-maned giant enters the cell, a torch in one hand, and a bowl of something that Margo hopes is food in another. He sets the bowl in front of Margo, the crude handle of what she thinks is a wooden spoon sticking out of it at an angle. Then he proceeds to wedge the torch into a wall mount.

Tasks completed, he crouches in front of her.

Her eyes have sufficiently adjusted to the new illumination, and she takes the opportunity to examine her visitor more closely. The top of his face is covered with a close-fitting mask made of something that could be metal, or could be cured leather, and that only leaves his mouth and chin exposed. Above that is a mane of thick, white dreadlocks. The skin beneath the mask is weatherworn, and he seems older - in his mature years whatever that might be for his kind. He does seem human, by and large, except for the size.

"You are far from home, Outworlder" he comments, and the eyes staring at her from the mask are dark, and sparkle with a keen intelligence.

"What do you mean?" Margo asks, mostly to buy herself some time to process the new moniker. Can he see what she is, somehow?

"Simply what I said. You are not from the mountain, not from the ice and stone and sky. A valley weed. Your spirit grew from fat grassy soils, where the gods that dwell are sweet and playful, and only rarely ask for blood. So, a lowlander. But not from here. An outworlder. You walk in the skin of another. You are not a god first, though you traded your place with a mad one." There is a kind of flat, staccato quality to his voice, as if he is listening to words that arise inside himself, and then repeating them out loud. "And you are far from your home, and unlikely to see it again."

Margo tries to process all this, and weighs her options. She has no idea what the revelation of her status means to this man, or his people. Or who his people are. Or why they are being held prisoner. That the Avvar are different – viscerally, profoundly different – from what she has so far seen of Thedas is abundantly clear.

But she does have a way of mapping whoever the white-maned giant is. As Varric would say, if she were a betting woman, she'd wager this is some kind of ritual specialist. A shaman, perhaps.

"You do not seem surprised by this" Margo ventures. It seems more logical not to deny what he is saying outright – in no small part because she feels like he might be channeling something - but she's not about to burst out with a relieved confession about how she's really a stranded scholar from a different realm re-embodied as an elven rogue.

"Why would I be surprised? You are here, as you are, which means that this has happened before, and will again. The gods have willed it. What is there to be surprised about?" He takes the bowl, and places it in her hands. "I am a Amund. I watch the Sky and read the Lady's signs. Eat."

Margo maneuvers the bowl into her lap, and begins to shovel the thin colorless gruel into her mouth – an awkward proposition when your hands are tied. She is starving, so doesn't in fact notice the taste. While she eats, she thinks furiously. She is not a specialist in the history of religion, but has enough background knowledge to sketch an intellectual map for the giant's words. Are the Avvar animists? He called her a lowlander, so by extension his identity must be tied to 'highlands' - or mountains. In that context, a cult of the sky would make sense. She wonders if his people practice sky burials, as was done throughout Central Asia and the Himalayan Plateau. And he mentions gods, so a complex, polytheistic pantheon is likely. So… not the Chantry. Those, by and large, seem closer to the monotheistic end of the spectrum, as far as religious beliefs go.

"Why have you captured us?" she asks instead.

He shrugs.

"I have no quarrel with you, outsider. The son of our clan's thane wishes to augment his standing by challenging the Herald of Andraste. I take it he believes that capturing your people will draw her attention."

Margo forces herself to stop eating, so that some of the gruel is left for Jan.

"My companion is sick. Can you help him? Or… let me give him something. I can make a healing potion for him if I have the ingredients."

Amund cocks his head to the side, and considers Jan's huddled shape on the floor.

"Why? If he is dying, the gods must find this pleasing."

Margo frowns.

"He is running a fever. It means he most likely has an infection, and if I can figure out what is causing it and address it, maybe I can stop it."

Amund stares at her curiously.

"Tell me, Outworlder. Two men go hunt in the same party. One is mauled by a bear, the other is left unscathed. Why?"

Margo tries to read the Avvar's expression, but it is difficult to gauge behind the mask. His face remains placid, but there's a kind of gleam in his dark eyes, an intense but distracted curiosity, as if he is listening to two conversations at once, trying to split his attention between them.

"I…" she thinks. But this is familiar, a common religious explanation for misfortune in her world as well. "I suppose because the man who is mauled had incurred some kind of cosmic debt" she ventures. "Or angered a deity. Or angered his own protector, who turned away from him."

The Avvar gives her a long look.

"Could be. Or could be that the other one has incurred enough favor to deflect the danger from himself. Where you come from, Outworlder, do your gods speak through birds, and winds, and clouds?"

Margo mulls this over. Of course, it's in most shamanic religions – place spirits, animal spirits, sometimes the spirits of ancestors that attach to a particular lineage and rain misery or incessant demands on their living kin. But, if she's honest with herself, her knowledge of this isn't entirely academic or abstract, either. Baba's world was… inhabited. An enchanted sort of banality. With trickster house spirits that misplaced your favorite teacup, and terrifying forest spirits that would steal a baby and trade it for a changeling, and water spirits that would lure you into a sink hole at the bottom of the river or look back at you from the dark depths with a reflection not your own. Baba was a narrative poacher, a collector – she would weave whatever strands of folklore she came across into the stories she told her two surviving grandkids when they were small. She didn't discriminate much by cultural origin – if it dwelled and had intent, if you could leave it some milk and bread, or ask it for a favor, if it could trap you, or beguile you, or shower you with riches, then in it went into the great stew pot of her tales.

"Sometimes" Margo nods, answering the Avvar's question. "Though not everyone listens. And I suppose not everyone can hear."

The Avvar is silent for a long time, seemingly lost in thought – or in listening to some internal melody only he can distinguish.

"If... If my friend has angered the gods, then perhaps there is also a reason why he ended up being captured with me, and not alone or with someone else. I am reasonably sure I can help him."

"Perhaps if the gods will it, you may. The world is all that is the case, after all."

Margo startles and stares. Did the Avvar just quote Ludwig Wittgenstein at her?

"I cannot help you beyond bringing you food. But you are not entirely deaf, for a lowlander. And you walk the dreams. Though I would advise you to stop calling on the wishmonger god. You do not want one such as he to take a liking. Though I suspect it's too late for that."

Amund straightens.

"What will your thane's son do with us?"

The Avvar shrugs.

"Hand of Korth? He will do whatever he thinks will usher a confrontation with your leader faster. He is a stupid and impatient brat." He pauses. Considers her. "When you die, I could rend your bones to offer the Lady of the Sky, if you so wish. I have never had her reject my offerings."

Well. She supposes that answers the sky burial question.

Margo force-feeds Jan the rest of her gruel, but he is lethargic, his skin burning to the touch. She tries to find a wound.

"Does anything hurt" she asks, trying to brush his hair, sticky with sweat, out of his face.

He points to his chest. She tries to take a look under the armor. She can see some pretty severe bruising around his rib cage, but the skin is not broken, just discolored with hematomas, so she concludes it must be internal damage. Which, of course, is worse.

Someone brings them water, that tastes brackish and sulfurous, and will probably give them both severe gastrointestinal distress, but she's so thirsty it takes an active effort not to gulp everything down at once. She notices that they are being given only one ration – and she suspects that it is meant for her, not the sick man.

She makes sure Jan gets his share.

The keep is quiet – eerily so – safe for the incessant drip of rain.

She forces herself to stay awake, terrified of what might be lurking in the Fade, waiting for her. What did the Avvar shaman say? Something about her calling Imshael?

To pass the time – and to avoid losing her marbles - Margo goes through the poetry she has managed to retain over the years, or has been forced to memorize at some point as part of her education. T.S. Eliot's Wastelands, she recalls almost in its entirety – a byproduct of photographic memory. Poe's Raven too. Whispers that one under her breath. Chunks of the Divine Comedy. The rest is patchy, a stanza here, a stanza there. She moves to song lyrics then. That keeps her occupied, humming, for a time. She gets stuck on The Door's Bird of Prey. Sky burials.

When she runs out of lyrics, she switches to nursery rhymes.

Then, she counts bricks.

Jan's breathing pattern changes. He is coughing intermittently, weakly, but with a kind of wet, gurgling rattle to it. She maneuvers herself to him, and gets him partially off the floor, propping him up into a half-sitting position so that it's easier to breathe. He leans against her, skin hot like a furnace.

"Listen, lass. If I die here, I need you to do something for me in Redcliff next time you're there."

His voice is quiet, but when he opens his eyes, they seem tired, but aware. Unclouded.

"You're not going to die, Jan. We're going to get out of this shitpit."

He chuckles, then it devolves into a racking cough, which he covers as best he can. Blood bubbles form on his lips, and Margo decides it's not an infection. It's moving too fast. Probably a perforated lung.

"Feisty one. I like you. And not just because I'd like to bed you" he adds, and there's a kind of rueful self-irony there that gets Margo smiling despite herself.

"I still have to meet a woman you wouldn't like to bed, Jan, so I won't take this too personally. And I'm sure there's a whole trail of skirts yet unlifted in your future, so hold on tight, alright?"

Jan smiles, a little crooked, but then his expression turns serious.

"I have a kid. In Redcliff" he says, matter of fact. "When I kick it, take whatever pension the Inquisition owes for my hide to his mother. Elandra. Elven lass. Redhead."

Margo feels her heart constrict. This idiot doesn't deserve this. None of them deserve this. All this absurd, unnecessary death, and for what? Petty fucking posturing between nearsighted bigmen, waving their phalluses around. She'd very much like to meet this Hand of Korth, whoever he is. And maybe feed him his own eyeballs as a prophylactic against future idiocy.

"If it comes to that, I promise you I will."

They sit like that for a while.

She hopes that the others made it out alright. She also hopes that Evie doesn't decide to march down here to the rescue. This shit-bog isn't worth it. Leliana is right. They really are disposable, in the grand scheme of things.

Margo closes her eyes. Jan is … right, by and large. The chances of them making it out alive are relatively slim. There's not a hell of a lot she can do about that, but she could, maybe, in theory, warn the others. At least let them know where the soldiers disappeared to, and what the Avvar, in fact, want. That they are not acting under the command of the tribe's thane, but of his son, and that there is at least some dissent among their ranks, if Amund's opinion is anything to go by. That the keep is unlikely to be well-fortified, and that there will probably not be reinforcements from other Avvar groups.

But for that she would have to dream. And risk another encounter with the cosmic asshole.

She closes her eyes, trying to still the low-grade tremor – equal parts hypothermia and terror. She is still huddled next to the rogue – and at this point, she is cynically, horribly grateful for his fever, because the heat he gives off keeps her from shaking like a leaf.

It takes a long time for her to drift off.

When she opens her eyes, the space is a non-Euclidean mess, like an Escher sketch rendered in shades of puke green. She walks up a staircase that keeps looping back on itself, until she simply gives up, and sits down on a step.

She's never tried to actively call the elf before. Not just "think" towards him, or whatever abstract action of mind is required to control the Fade, but simply call him, as one would an acquaintance one spots down the street.

"Solas" she says. She expects an echo, but instead the air – if one can call the substance that - muffles the sound. Like talking into a cardboard tube.

"Ma da'nas. You are alive." She turns her head, and there he is, right next to her, one step above. And her first reaction is to shrink away, involuntarily, because for a split second, she's not sure – and is utterly terrified that she summoned the other horror, again. But then the feeling dissipates, and is replaced by a kind of conviction, at a sensorial level she has no name for, that this is, indeed, the elf.

"Are you hurt?" he asks, his hand reaching out – at first, she thinks, for her cheek – but then settling on her shoulder.

She looks at him then, and is vaguely, abstractly amused that the 'warm fuzzies' – or whatever one might call the initial period of your standard, garden variety crush – are steadily morphing into the next stage, the emotional storm of full blown infatuation.

But it does that, so what can you do? And underneath it all, of course, the other thing. She smiles, probably a little sadly, because really, it istoo bad they likely will not get the chance to get to know each other better. No matter what all the other stuff between them might be – and yes, it's the big pink unresolved elephant in the room (although Margo briefly considers that the thought of a resolved elephant is somewhat alarming in and of itself). But at this point she'd trade just about anything for a glass of wine in front of the fire, and a long evening conversation. Maybe about the nature of spirits. Or magic. Religion. Theodosian history. Or hell, even Elvhen linguistics, she wouldn't mind learning more about that. Is it agglutinative? Does it have vowel harmony? Or what he thinks of the Avvar. Or Qunari, or Tevinter. Or anything else about this strange, terrible, dazzling world.

Ah, fuck. It's the ones you want to talk to that you need to watch out for, as Baba liked to joke.

"Please. Margo… Tell me where you are. Tell me how to help you." And there is such urgency in his voice that, for a second, she just wants to fall into his arms, close her eyes, and breathe in deeply the scent of ozone and smoke and pine needles.

She doesn't.

"I don't know how much time I have. We are in a keep, or castle. Jan is here as well. He's dying." Her voice barely hitches. "There are other Inquisition soldiers here somewhere, but not in the same place where we are kept."

There is a wobble to the dreamworld, and Margo rushes through the words, before the dream disintegrates. "Listen, this is all at the behest of some Avvar lord's son. I believe he wants to challenge Evie to increase his own status – so we are either a lure, or hostages. Not all of the Avvar are on his side, and I don't think the keep is theirs – I think they're squatting. It sounds very… unlived in."

The dream wobbles again.

He reaches for her, both hands on her shoulders, and she feels him somehow stabilize the dreamscape.

"Solas, if I don't see you again, I wanted to say… thank you. And…" She doesn't quite know what she wants to tell him, and none of it would fit in the allocated time anyway. Language, she suddenly realizes, is a very linear thing.

He's about to say something, but she motions him to wait.

Instead, Margo tries to replicate what he did when he was returning her memories to her. She'd never even consider trying anything like this under normal circumstances – but what does she have to lose at this point, right? If it doesn't work - and it probably won't - and ends up being embarrassing, at least it probably won't be embarrassing for too much longer.

What did Amund say? When you die, I can rend your bones for you.

A final kindness.

It's awkward, weird work that strains something in her mind that she didn't know was there in the first place. At length, she manages to produce a small, fragile little dream bubble, except instead of being encapsulated it is sort of 'excapsulated,' for lack of a better term. It's not well-executed – messy, schematic, and missing crucial bits, like a toddler's drawing. But it does contain the thought-impression of her wish. Or not thought, so much, but rather a kind of memory, hypothetical, one that didn't happen, but could have been.

The world is all that is the case.

Fireplace. Wine. A long conversation that doesn't exactly have a set goal, but rather weaves together, meandering, like a stroll down a misty alley in some old, overgrown, half-forgotten park.

It's maybe the size of a baseball, no more than that. She pushes it toward him, and he catches it in one hand. Except that's not quite right either – she is not sure exactly what he does with it, but this is how her mind glosses over an act for which she lacks the proper interpretative apparatus.

His eyes widen, and he looks at her, an expression she really can't decipher on his features. There's surprise there, but that's the tip of the iceberg, and below it something complicated and a little pained, like a habit suddenly having to rearrange itself, working against a familiar pattern ossified by repeated use.

The world wobbles, and comes off kilter.

"I'm out of time," she says, because she can't hold the dream anymore.

"Oh, da'nas. Wait…"

She opens her eyes.

She can't quite tell how much time passes. Less than a day-cycle, but it's hard to estimate time with the perpetual murky rain that drenches the god-forsaken bog.

The next time they're brought food and water, there is a lockpick hidden inside her bowl of gruel.

* * *

 **Authors note** : This chapter was brought to you by Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The standard interpretation of the statement 'the world is all that is the case' has to do with the relationship between logic, language, and the possibilities of description. It made sense to me that Amund might use a statement along those lines to express the simple, practical facticity of his gods, and how their will manifests in the world. When Margo references the same sentence later, she does it with a different meaning: she's getting a sense of the non-dualism of the Fade, which allows for competing possibilities to co-exist at once - if a given proposition is plausible, from the perspective of formal logic, then it can be brought into existence (hence there is no "absolute" truth in the Fade, as we get from the in-game conversations about what happened in Ostagar). Also, brought to you by sky burials, which are nothing to scoff at.

Next up: Escapes and shenanigans.

Also! Thank you so much for those of you who share your thoughts and leave comments. I don't always respond, but just know that they warm my heart. 3


	18. Chapter 18: Bad Odds

Content warning: minor character death; graphic depictions of violence

* * *

Margo stares at the pick in mute frustration. The only thing she's ever managed to successfully lock pick in her life is a luggage lock. And those things are designed to open if you so much as sneeze at them insistently enough.

This is a different matter. A large, heavy locking mechanism – simple and crude, yes, but one meant to open only when enough force is applied to turn the key. The word that comes to mind is warded lock.

Jan would know what to do. But it's unlikely he will be able to help.

She still tries, maneuvering herself closer to the rogue, and using the opportunity to get more of the questionable water into him. Eventually, she is able to make him drink, and his eyes flutter open, slowly.

"Jan. Walk me through how to pick a lock."

It takes him a while to respond, and when he does, his voice is barely a rasp.

"You forgot that too?"

She just nods, and then holds the lock pick in front of his eyes to give him a sense of the kind of tool they have to work with.

"Skeleton key" he says. "Stick it in, and just keep fiddling with the mechanism. Until you can turn it."

Not very helpful, but she supposes she can cut him some slack, on account of the whole dying thing. Margo pushes the hysterics as far down as they'll go – which isn't very far – and sticks the skeleton key into the keyhole. And, after what feels like an eternity, it catches. She starts turning the pick clockwise – ever so slowly – but then something blocks its progress.

Shit.

She pulls it a fraction of an inch forward, palms sweaty, fingers slippery, and probes the lock. Nothing. Pushes it inward, trying to keep whatever half-turn she has managed to wrangle out of it. And then, with a loud popping sound, the lock clicks open.

Margo extracts her foot from the cuff, wincing at what is probably a fairly nasty, infected sore – but she has neither the time, light, nor the inclination to examine it too closely at this point. She makes her way to the door. It's a similar kind of mechanism – another crude warded lock. This one takes her about twenty minutes of squatting and muttering unflattering things about Avvar matrilines to disengage, and then, the door opens, and she sneaks a look up and down the hallway.

No one is around.

After a brief moment of hesitation, she leaves the cell, and closes the door behind her. First things first, she needs to find something to stabilize Jan – without that, there is no way she can move him, and she's not leaving without him. She tries to recall which directions the footsteps usually came from. The odds that their stuff is kept somewhere close to their cell are slim to none. Most likely, they've already been distributed among their captors – but if she can find wherever they make their gruel, there is a chance she'd come across Elfroot – or, if she's really lucky, maybe even Some Fungus – and then she can make something out of that.

Mid-hallway, she stops. The smell is faint, but it's unmistakable – the sweet, metallic twang of blood lotus reeds – like blood and violets. She follows the smell into a small, crammed room, at the very end of the hallway, with furniture pushed together haphazardly, broken and rotting from disuse or maltreatment. There's a pile of stuff in the corner, and at that point, Margo just gapes at it, because she cannot believe her luck. It's all manner of equipment – belts, a few knapsacks, some items of clothing. Boots. She spots her grenade belt immediately, at the side of the pile. It's what must be reeking of the blood lotus – she never did have the chance to clean it properly before they got kidnapped, and Adan had mentioned to her once that the stuff oxidizes with a strong odor. It's probably going to be a bitch to get the smell out now, but Margo has never been so grateful in her life for this particular lapse in proper hygienic practices.

Whatever the reason the Avvars piled it all in one place – whether because they don't find value in these particular objects, or because they have some kind of elaborate redistribution system – Margo decides not to waste her time speculating. One of her dagger sheaths is there – the one that's more visibly damaged - but the weapons are missing. However, the grenade belt is practically intact – one health and two lyrium potions are broken, but all the grenades are still safely tucked away into their padded little cells. And she has two more elfroot draughts and one magica tonic to work with. She also finds a dirk – an old weapon, with a slightly loose hilt, which makes her think that the pile is, indeed, the refuse heap – and something that looks like a paring knife, but is probably a shiv. She grabs both of those.

She runs back down the hallway, heart hammering in her throat because how much longer can her luck hold before it runs out, and some unaccommodating and aggressively minded Avvar guard shows up to check on the prisoners? Though no one has really bothered with them much since they've been here – although this probably just means that this is precisely the time their captors suddenly decide to rectify this oversight.

But the hallway remains deserted, and no one stops her, so she gets back in the cell.

She lands next to Jan, lifts his head, unstoppers one of the elfroot vials with her teeth, and pours the contents down the rogue's throat. He coughs, but she manages to make most of it go down.

The draught works with usual uncanny speed, such that it makes her wonder, not for the first time, what is it about the local plants that causes the body to metabolize the active ingredients so well. Or, conversely, what is it about local bodies?

The rogue opens his eyes – normally, a pretty, piercing blue, but in the gloom a dark gray – and gives her a faint smile.

"Better. Not good. But better. Can you get me out of the manacles?"

It takes some fiddling with the skeleton key, but it goes faster than the first time around.

She helps him up, and he leans on her heavily as they make their way out of the door – the scent of elfroot mixing with the smell of blood, sweat, and whatever tannin was used to cure the leather of his armor. At least, he doesn't smell quite so sick anymore.

Once they're in the hallway, she's not sure which direction to go.

"That way" Jan points his chin to the left, probably relying on whatever tacit knowledge he has of military forts that Margo simply doesn't possess. At the end of the hallway, there is, indeed, a set of stairs.

They make it down one flight, and then Jan's hand closes around her wrist in a warning gesture.

Some kind of commotion has started outside – she can hear the rhythmic sound of boots hitting the cobblestones, the swishing of metal drawn from leather sheaths. The staircase has led them to a platform next to a narrow embrasure, from which Margo has a restricted, but serviceable view of the courtyard below.

She peeks out.

The keep's central hall is drenched in rain. It probably used to be quite a majestic space, before it fell into disrepair. Or, to be more specific, before the ceiling caved in. From where she is, she can see right down to what probably used to be the floor of the main keep, where the stones retain the faint traces of decorative patterns. Back when the fort wasn't a ruin, there would have been a roof in the way.

At the head of the hall, she spots a group of Avvar warriors, waiting. In the center, a large, muscular fellow adorned with a horned helmet that looks like it would be difficult to negotiate narrow doorframes in, makes a mock welcoming gesture with an axe the size of a stealth bomber.

Margo spots other prisoners, all in Inquisition uniforms, being led towards the warriors by a retinue of archers. There's a handful, maybe five or six other captives. A few are limping.

They are arranged into a kind of semi-circle by their escort. Margo looks down, wondering if she might spot Amund in the mix, but he's nowhere to be seen.

"Lowland scum!" The voice is low-pitched, arrogant, and carries well. The horned bastard – Margo decides to re-brand him Hand of Krotch – plops his giant axe on his shoulders like it's a plastic pool noodle. "You are about to witness your puny leader defeated by the mighty Hand of Korth! And then you shall die, and your blood will please the gods and bring good fortune to the true Avvar!"

Margo shakes her head. Oh for fuck's sake, really? This is what they get? All of this death, and misery because of this bombastic moron with a penchant for refering to himself in the third person? She looks down, at the Avvar warriors. Based on their body language, a few of them are very clearly itching for battle, swinging their weapons around and bouncing from foot to foot. But not all.

The prisoners are led away by their entourage of archers, and the rest of the Avvars look like they're getting ready for something. Eventually, the archers come back, and take positions. The others are calling to each other in some harsh, guttural vernacular she can't understand – but she is pretty sure that it is meant to be some version of pre-fight trash talk.

Ah shit… Does this mean that Evie and crew were actually convinced to come and challenge this troglodyte?

Margo leans into the embrasure, hoping to get a better view of the totality of the Avvar contingent. There's maybe fifteen of them she can see. A stab of anxiety hits her in the solar plexus. Shit. If what she suspects about the luck-bending properties of Evie's mark is true – and she's pretty sure something about her theory is correct - then there is absolutely no way that four or even five of them can take out this group of warriors, who are fighting on their own turf, and without any known handicap safe for the fact that their leader is a lugubrious cretin.

And then she spots movement around the entrance to the hall, where a long, wide set of stairs leads down the hill and into what must be the lower levels of the keep. She peers into the murk, trying to discern who – or what – is moving.

"Herald of Andraste" the horned axe-wielding asshat bellows. "Face me. I am the hand of Korth Himself."

Jan groans, and sits up to look through the opening in the stone.

"How many of ours?" he asks.

Margo tries to get a better view, but the embrasure is too narrow. After several interminable moments, familiar figures begin to materialize out of the fog.

There's Cassandra, taking the lead, and walking in with a confident swagger, a hand on the pummel of her sword. Margo thinks she's strolling in like she owns the place as a deliberate provocation – to draw attention to herself, and away from Evie. No one expects the Inquisition, and there's no way anyone expects Evie to be the Herald of Andraste herself. The bearlike shape stalking parallel to her must be Blackwall, and Margo breathes out in relief at the sight of him. Yup, physics-defying bear is a sight for sore eyes, and alongside Cassandra, they make a formidable pair. Behind them, she sees three more figures. Varric, center, Bianca in front of him like an AK-47. The Orlesian mage – the Iron Lady, as Varric would have it – to the left. And Solas, on the other side.

Evie is walking about twenty paces behind them – but at least her armor is now looking a lot more practical. Margo watches her move. Still. That weirdness – wrongness – is there, a kind of stilted quality to every step and gesture. But she is far enough back that Margo hopes that whatever strange effects her mark might produce, it won't affect the others' fortunes too severely. She did bring the cavalry. This can be won.

"There's… six of them in total" she tells Jan.

"Fifteen to six. That's not good odds" the rogue trails, and then is gripped by a coughing fit he tries to repress as much as he can.

"Do you have another draught?"

Margo shoots him a quick look.

"Last one. Is it getting worse?"

He doesn't respond right away.

"No. But, as I said, this is not good odds. With another draught, I will be able to fight for a bit."

Margo frowns.

"Jan, I didn't drag you all the way out here to get you killed. You're in no shape to do it."

"Stop fussing, lass. I'll be fine. Just…"

They don't have the time to finish the argument. The great horned buffoon emits another aggressive bellow, and the room explodes with the sounds of battle. Before Margo can quite realize what she's doing, she is running down the staircase, towards the great hall, the sounds of metal hitting metal ringing in her ears. The air crackles, an updraft hitting her nose with the smell of ozone and ancient mountain glaciers. The ozone must be Solas's magic. The glacial breeze, she guesses, is Vivienne.

Before she can burst out into the courtyard, her brain finally switches on, and she forces her body to slow down. She is only armed with a shiv – she gave Jan the dirk – and a few grenades. What the hell is she thinking? The adrenaline is carrying her so far, but she'd be an idiot to think that she is battle-ready after however many days in a dank, frozen cell with minimal food and water, and little sleep.

She turns around, and sees Jan, closely on her heels, but his expression is pinched, probably because the pain is back, and weary – as if he is coming to a similar conclusion.

They enter the great hall quietly, hidden from view by one of the crumbling columns.

Margo looks over at the battle. And her stomach tightens into a terrified little ball. The pattern is more subtle this time, not as glaring as it was in the ancient fortress in the Hinterlands, with the demon ring and the hell-yolk rift. This… this you could miss if you didn't know how to look.

An archer releases the string of a bow with a whistling thwack, and the arrow flies towards Evie, but misses by a wide margin, even though the shot was well aimed. Blackwall, forced back on a close orbit to Evie by two large Avvar warrior, parries the attack of one heavily armored opponent – strike, parry, strike again from below – deflects a blow with his shield, but then his next strike lands oddly, and reverbs into his arm and leaves him open for a split second. His opponent exploits this, and sends him flying with a kick to the stomach from an impressively large booted foot.

Another arrow – too fast to see, of course, but aimed at Evie once again, goes wild. Cassandra, taunts the giant horned buffoon, but then slips on the wet cobblestone, and rolls out of the way, narrowly avoiding being split in two by the stealth-bomber sized axe.

Evie, still in the back of the group, but closer – too close - strikes out against one of the archers who is now charging at her with a dagger – an awkward, unpracticed movement with a sword that's too heavy for her. It doesn't connect, and the momentum carries her around, exposing her back to her attacker. Margo's heart freezes, anticipating the fatal blow, but then, in front of her, Vivienne's spell fails with a spectacular explosion of ice crystals, and the magician is blown back about ten feet by the shock wave, crumpling into a pile of fancy Orlesian couture on the keep's floor. The dagger-wielding rogue takes a few wobbly steps, then drops to the floor, face down, a stray ice shard embedded into his eye socket.

Margo takes a quick look at Jan.

"Still bad odds" he says.

Did he see the same thing as she did in the old fort? He fought with them, but on the outside. But… no. This is subtle. The only reason she's noticing the connections is because she is actively looking for them. Otherwise, it just looks like their side is having a streak of shit luck.

"Jan, listen. We can help them, but you need to do exactly what I say, and don't ask why, alright?"

He looks like he's about to argue, so she just rushes right over him.

"Stay on the periphery, and take out as many archers as you can."

He gives her a slightly smug grin.

"Any other brilliant strategic advice, Commander?"

"Yes. No matter what, don't come close to the Herald."

He frowns at that, but there must be something about her expression that somehow convinces him. He nods.

"I'll need that last potion."

She hands it to him, with the strong feeling that she's making a mistake, but unable to articulate why, and hence unable to stop.

And then, they both spring to their feet, and Margo is running along the perimeter of the skirmish, grenades ready at her fingers.

She's able to take two of the archers out with the explosives, staying well outside whatever radius is likely affected by Evie's mark. Jan is sneaking up on a third archer, on the other side of the hall, and Margo leaves him to his task. After the second grenade blows up, she gets noticed – both by her side, and by the Avvars. She hears Varric yell out "Prickly" somewhere behind her, but she's too busy running away from a large Avvar dude who is brandishing what she's pretty sure is a bone club made of the femur of some large, carnivorous, and difficult to kill creature.

When he's almost upon her, Margo twirls around and, in a movement that Iron Bull had her practice in the icy slush for what felt like three centuries straight, pushes off and slides between the warrior's legs, slashing with her shiv across the tendons at the back of his knees, one - then flip – and, quickly, the other, right at the crease of his armor. The Avvar collapses with a roar, swinging his club wildly. She leaves him to it – he's not going anywhere, and someone else can finish him off. She still can't bring herself to kill a man with her own hands.

She steals a quick glance at the others. Somehow, they've been driven into a tighter radius, with Evie at the epicenter – which isn't good at all. She sees the mages swing their staffs – asynchronically, each with a distinct manner of spell casting. Vivienne's is more theatrical, as if she is performing on a stage, each movement accompanied with a brief, aesthetically pleasing flourish. Solas's casting is effortless, graceful, and laconic. She catches a brief glimpse of his face, in profile – he is pale as a sheet, features gaunt from magica drain, cheeks hollowed out.

In her estimation, about seventy five percent of the spells are failing, and another ten are backfiring.

She catches Varric's eyes, rimmed with the dark puffy circles of exhaustion, and his expression is grim. He taps Bianca with his thumb, and shakes his head once, in what Margo interprets as "this shit ain't working right" expression.

There is no way they are going to win this. She looks for Jan, frantically, and briefly spots a flicker of a movement behind another archer, in the far corner of the room. A quick flash of silver, and the archer's throat explodes with a stream of crimson. Margo catches herself feeling pretty fucking impressed with the rogue. At least something is going right. Between her grenades and Jan's assassination spree, they've somehow managed to take care of the long-range threat.

But that still leaves a group of about eight Avvars – minus the one she decommissioned earlier, who is now dead, likely courtesy of Jan, and another dead body she attributes to Blackwall's efforts - slowly surrounding Evie and the crew, and even if Solas, and perhaps Varric know they should break formation and disperse, this would go against both instinct and the battle's momentum. There's simply nowhere to go.

And at this point, she has seen enough that the Avvar shaman's words suddenly click into place, and the strange probability bending pattern makes a sick kind of sense. Amund is right. It's not just that one deflects ill-luck from oneself. It's that there is a conservation principle at play. You cannot create ex nihilo. The magic of Evie's mark must be leaching luck from her allies – or outsourcing ill-luck to them. Margo gnaws at the inside of her cheek, trying to think fast through the model. This would also mean that when Evie herself gets lucky – and hits her target – fortune is siphoned off from someone else in the party.

Whatever the magic that surrounds Evie is, it is a kind of vampire.

The colossal absurdity of the whole thing suddenly washes over her with a wave of barely repressed hysterical cackling. And rage. Pure, unadulterated, fucking rage at the pointlessness of it. That the horn-waring shit gibbon and his buddies might actually kill her friends – and this world's only chance at saving itself – for what? For what asinine purpose? And the only reason he'd manage this is that this entire group of accomplished, focused warriors (well, minus Evie) are working with a handicap they can barely see, let alone counteract. Margo somehow manages to stop herself from howling in helpless rage. Just give her enough blood lotus extract to blow this shithole to smithereens, and she'll do it in a heartbeat. With herself in it, if she has to – she'd find a way to get the others to safety, somehow - but fuck this.

The only chance they have is if they space out and get as far away from Evie as possible. Damnit, Varric and Solas must know this, at least on some level, but they're hemmed in.

Margo's foot hits against something hard on the keep's floor, and she looks down. Stones. Lots and lots of loose stones, and fragments of stones, littering the periphery of the hall – likely remainders from the time the roof collapsed.

Well, she's not 'without sin,' as they say, but someone's gotta do the casting, so there we go.

She picks up a baseball-sized stone fragment, weighs it in her palm, and then adopts a wide stance, aims at Hand of Krotch's moronic helmet, and launches her projectile.

It flies in a neat little arc, and thwacks the bonehead smack between the horns. Hand of Krotch, shakes it off – a motion remarkably similar to a dog flinging water from its fur - and turns.

"Over here, you dickless shitgibbon!" Margo yells. In her body's slightly raspy alto the taunt actually sounds threatening, rather than, say, juvenile. And it carries well, so that all heads – both enemies and allies – turn to her. Well. She's got everyone attention now, might as well make the best of it. "Is that a coat rack on your head, or did your mamma like to spread 'em for a goat?"

Because, when in doubt, there are always yo mamma jokes.

Varric, bless him, gets what she's trying to do right away. He gives her a brief motion with his free hand – a thumbs up, and then a circular gesture, which Margo interprets as "keep going." A quick exchange between the trio, and then Solas and Varric fan out, and Vivienne, dragging Evie by the forearm, makes her way towards the shelter of a large pile of architectural rubble. Blackwall and Cassandra widen their stances, shields raised and weapons at the ready.

Some of the Avvar warriors are looking uncertainly towards the 'head' of the operation (such as it is), but Hand of Krotch is still trying to puzzle out the exact meaning of Margo's last insult.

At this point, Margo's on a roll, though. After going down a detailed zoological survey of the idiot Avvar's mother's bedroom preferences, she mixes it up with a couple of digs at his own likely underwhelming capacity under the sheets, and then, for good measure, throws in something vaguely blasphemous about Korth. All the while launching projectiles, which connect with their targets less than she'd like, but definitely annoy.

The latest Korth insult – something scatological about the god not knowing this idiot from a frozen yak turd (whether Thedas has yaks or not Margo isn't sure, but something about yak turds strikes her as universally amusing) – gets the big Avvar to bellow that he is going to tear her limb from limb after fucking her bloody (though it might be in the other order, she's not sure).

"Whatcha waiting for, bonehead?" Another stone. "Or you need to hold hands first? Come and get me!"

Hand of Krotch charges, but by this point her friends are in position, and Evie's out of the way. Margo takes off at a sprint, down from her own pile of rubble and to the right, trying to outflank the roaring and stomping horde that's coming her way.

She swerves out of the reach of a particularly swift Avvar, and makes a beeline straight for Cassandra and Blackwall, who are charging at the horde with taunts of their own. She has a brief glimpse of Cassandra's expression, focused and clear, eyes sharp as a hawk's. Blackwall's is cold, almost detached, and yet utterly murderous – a kind of transcendent battle rage.

She slides between them, at a dead run, hoping that the two can stall Hand of Krotch and give the rest of the team a chance to pick off the supporting cast of rampaging barbarians with long-range fire. There's another pile of debris, about half-way between where she is and Solas's position. Their eyes meet, and for a brief moment, in the eerie glow of another spell, he looks entirely otherworldly to her, like some ancient demiurge, too outside of the bounds of habitual thought to comprehend beyond the stark, breathtaking, terrifying beauty of his sheer otherness. And then, she blinks, and the illusion breaks, and it is just Solas again, bloodied, dirty, features drawn with fatigue and magica depletion. He mouths something at her, but she can't hear the words over the din of battle, so he nods towards the pile of rubble, and makes a quick gesture with his staff that Margo decides means something like "I'll cover you."

She scrambles to the pile of debris and fishes a lyrium potion out of her belt. She holds it up for the elf to see, then tosses it. Solas catches the vial easily with his left hand, and then uncorks it and downs the contents right away. A moment later a blue glow bursts around her, and the air prickles briefly with the iodine scent of the ocean – there, then gone. She picks up a stone, just in time to notice two Avvars slow down, at the outer range of Solas's spell. She hurls her rock, aiming at the warrior on the right while he's distracted with a lightning bolt that scorches the ground half-a-step from him. The rock hits him in the jaw with a satisfying crunch, and swirls him around. And then Jan steps out of another shadow – and Margo at this point would really like to know how this trick works because it certainly looks useful – and drives his dirk up under the Avvar's chin. The warrior falls, his body twitching spasmodically even after Jan retrieves his weapon, and Margo swallows back a fit of nausea.

The other Avvar fails to step out of the lightning bolt's way, which, really, she can't fault him for. How the hell are you supposed to dodge lightning?

"The Herald!"

Margo whips around, in time to see Varric gesture in the direction of where Evie and Vivienne are hauled up. Hand of Krotch is otherwise occupied with Cassandra and Blackwall – which is precisely what Margo had hoped would happen – but the remaining Avvars have apparently figured out who the weakest link might be, and have decided to go for it.

The dwarf changes something about Bianca's configuration and releases a volley of arrows into the group of goons, screaming through the crossbow's visibly brutal recoil.

Solas takes off at a run in the direction of Vivienne and Evie, and after a second of hesitation Margo follows him, Jan on her heels – behind, and a little to the right. Shit. It's possible that if they stay just at the perimeter of what she thinks is Evie's hexing force field – because, of course, this is exactly what this feels like, an actual real life, honest to God hex - then they might still fight effectively. Varric's far enough that it doesn't seem to be affecting him.

She gets a glimpse of Vivienne, whose face is drawn in strained annoyance. Almost every single spell – except for the blue barrier one, and some other weird and fussy looking thing that draws icy hieroglyphs on the ground some ten feet ahead of her – seem to fizzle and fail.

Solas is getting near what she thinks is the perimeter of Evie's jinxing bubble, but doesn't slow down. Margo's eyes widen. What the hell is the elf doing?

"Solas!" she screams. Perhaps he thinks it's narrower than it is.

He turns around, barely breaking his stride.

"Have to… spread it around. Stay out!" he barks back.

Ah fuck. Because, of course, he has figured it out too – that Evie's vortex of ill-luck is a zero sum game, and that the more bodies there are to siphon from, the better the individual odds are. Margo wonders briefly what would happen if no one was around at all – would Evie survive an attack? Would fortune, in fact bend ex nihilo? But of course, she can't make that bet. And she's pretty sure Solas must have weighted this, and come to the same conclusion.

She should stop Jan from coming into the perimeter. A quick glance back at the rogue, and she can see that the elfroot potion is waning, that the damage is beginning to catch up to him again. That his chances at survival are lower than for the others. And then, she looks at Evie's terrified, focused, tear-streaked face. At Varric's clenched jaw as his hands work another bolt into the crossbow. At Vivienne, who suddenly looks ten years older. And at the elf.

When she makes the decision, it feels like something inside her, in some place she's never paid much attention to, stretches, then snaps. She doesn't stop the rogue. But neither does she, herself, slow down, and she lets her legs carry her forward, and into the space of the hex.

The next five or so minutes of Margo's life are a blur. Later, she remembers some of it – brief, decontextualized details, like flashes of action frozen by a strobe light. She remembers the way blood explodes from a puncture wound in Varric's shoulder, and it looks much redder than blood ought to look. She remembers the singed hair smell of Vivienne's failed spells, three in a row, as the woman screams through the agony of whatever happens when magica runs out, and the mage asks of its body to perform something that it no longer can do. She remembers Solas's eyes, something almost mineral about their color in a face paler than paper, when he drives the bottom of his staff into the back of the guy who's about to lobe off Margo's head. Nothing magical about that. She remembers what the blade of a sword looks like when it comes out on the wrong side of Jan's torso, about two inches to the left of the spine. She remembers the gristly pop and easy give of what it feels like to drive her shiv into the jugular of the man who is lifting Evie off the ground by the throat. She remembers the searing pain of the sword slashing across her thigh.

And she remembers Evie's tear-streaked face and blood-covered armor, not a single drop of it her own.

When it's all over, she finds herself in a heap on the floor, Blackwall, of all people, tying a tourniquet around her upper thigh with a leather belt. Probably his own.

"Mage!" he calls out, urgent, and then, on the other side, there is Solas, and his hands are on her and he's driving his magic out and into her body with almost too much force. Blackwall recoils from the reverbed static.

"Easy there, fella" he soothes, like one might a cornered animal.

Margo turns to Solas.

"Help Jan. Please. It might not be too late. He still must have some of the tonic in his system…"

She sees it then, in the subtle shift in his facial expression, a softening around his eyes.

He shakes his head once.

"I'm sorry, da'nas. He is gone."

The howl never makes it past her lips, but drives itself inward, settling into her very bones.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by the zero sum game, a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants.

Note from your author: Thank you so much for the favs, follows, and reviews. I'm glad there's some enjoyment to be had from this crazy experiment. I unfortunately can't respond to those who review as guests (unless I'm majorly missing something about ff functionality), but I just wanted to say that I appreciate you and the fact that you left some thoughts. Also a meta note - going forward, this story has a lot of musings about religion & philosophy and it's sort of woven into the worldbuilding. It'll get brainy - I am writing an overeducated academic MCIT and pairing her with Solas, so that's sort of inevitable. Leave me a note if you want a quick meta-comment on the stuff that's going on with the philosophical bits.

Next time: a bit of an emotional mess, more Solas and Margo, and a heart to heart with Varric


	19. Chapter 19: Memento Mori

There is some debate about whether or not to rehabilitate the old keep, but in the end, the undead make too much of a deterrent. They are set to head back to Haven at the end of the next day.

Margo sees Amund among the faces at the makeshift camp they have set up in the keep's upper courtyard, after cleaning out the dead Avvar. She is not surprised. When he spots her, he makes his way over. He smells, distinctly, of death and raw meat, and Margo concludes he must have been carrying out the funeral rights for his people.

"Your dead scream too loud inside you, Outworlder" he comments, dark eyes fixed on the skies, where the Breach cannot be seen. "You must not hold the dead too close. You let one in, then all the others come along. Do you wish me to help you with the offering?"

Margo, who can feel the scream vibrate under her skin with nowhere to go, opens her mouth to answer, and then closes it.

"I suspect Jan would have wanted an Andrastean funeral" she finally says.

The Avvar just nods.

They burn their dead – Jan, and one of the imprisoned Inquisition soldiers, who, from what Margo can tell, succumbed to sepsis.

Blackwall, Amund, and Cassandra help Harding and her build the funeral platforms, mostly from the random wood they find around the abandoned fort. Margo moves through the tasks like a zombie, making the necessary motions, but focusing all her energy on keeping the scream from breaking through her skin. Harding has somehow managed to save most of her blood lotus haul, and Margo spends an hour huddled by a small firepit, making the extract, to ensure the pyres burn hot. It feels like such a small thing.

At one point, Blackwall comes and sits by her.

"I still remember the first time I lost a friend in battle" he comments, and she's glad he doesn't phrase it as a question. And of course, Margo suddenly realizes that this odd bearded man probably knows her better than many of the others here, simply by dint of training with her every single day, and carefully identifying all her ticks, hang-ups, and hesitations. War too is a language.

"Does it get easier?" she asks.

He shrugs.

"Not particularly. Just duller. It will feel like you have razor blades under your skin, but it'll pass." He stays silent for a while. "My advice is, get back to Haven, and get fucking drunk. My treat. Bull and Sera will be happy to pitch in some coppers, I'm sure."

Margo nods. Sounds like solid advice to her. Whatever helps keep the scream down.

Evening comes, and they ignite the pyres, under the endless icy drizzle. Cassandra, as the closest to what they might have to an Andrastean ritual specialist, says a prayer for the dead, which washes over Margo like a wave – an abstract force, without underlying meaning. Once the bodies are swallowed up by the flames, she walks off, her mind blank, her only care to keep the howl caged inside.

She's not sure how she ends up on the ramparts, towards the outer part of the fortress. There's a locked door there, and she digs through her pockets until she locates the skeleton key. It doesn't even begin to budge the lock's mechanism. In fact, it doesn't fit, and this, somehow, feels only proper.

"Da'nas." A quiet, yet somehow steely appellation. "Abandoning the funeral so soon?"

Margo slowly pivots from the door. She has seen Solas around the camp, of course, but he has not approached her after the end of the battle, nor she him. The injury to her thigh was almost mended by the time they were out of that accursed hall, and she got it the rest of the way with good old elfroot.

She stares at the elf, the internal scream barely contained. She can't really make out his features in the damp gloom, but there is something tense about the way he is carrying himself, a kind of banked anger.

Oh, she doesn't have time for mercurial temper tantrums. Not today.

"Enjoying a stroll?" She squares her shoulders. She realizes she's a hair away from a fighting stance, but somehow can't snap herself out of it. "There's a truly spectacular view of some undead dipshits down there, if you want to take a look."

Because, really, there is. Spectacular. Undead shits everywhere, just milling around.

Whatever it is about her tone – or her body language – it just seems to antagonize him further.

He glides towards her, and the usually casual, meditative movement toggles effortlessly into its opposite. There's something predatory to it now.

He comes to stand a few feet away, blocking her path back along the rampart, but then he turns towards the bog beyond the wall, face in profile.

"Yes. A truly spectacular view. And a fleeting one, at that, as it appears."

Margo bristles. If he thinks she's in the mood for cryptic charades, he's got another thing coming.

"Yes" she replies caustically, not even sure why she's angry – or angry with him in particular – but unable to stop herself. "That's mortality for you, though. It'll do that."

He turns to her then. His facial expression feels like something untenable. Heat beneath the ice.

"I will not buffer this death wish of yours any longer, da'nas. It is pointless coddling. If you are so appalled by your existence here that you are determined to throw it away at every opportunity, then so be it. I will not interfere."

Margo just gapes at him.

"Are you fucking kidding me, elf?" she finally manages. "As I recall, you were the one running into the hex! Pot – kettle, pleased to meet you!"

He takes another predatory step towards her.

"Oh, it is just __elf__ now? And what do you think you are nowadays? What sort of body do you believe you inhabit?" he bites out, and she's surprised that his words don't crystalize and fall down as soon as they pass his lips, considering his icy tone.

She's so profoundly furious then – at him, at herself, at the whole stupid debacle with the Avvars, at the goddamn bog, the never ending rain, and at Evie's vampirical jinx bubble – that she has trouble arranging speech into anything more than monosyllabic expressions of rage.

She steps right in front of him – too close for polite, but, at this stage, she couldn't care less. The elf doesn't back down, but looms over her instead, this side of overtly menacing. Margo points a finger at his chest.

"What I am is someone who doesn't change the subject or deflect or start evasive maneuvers as soon as something remotely complicated rears its head!" Well. Maybe she's still sore at the whole __pleasantly polite__ thing. "Clearly, you understand how the mark and its hexing vortex worked. I have no more of a 'death wish' than you do, so do not patronize me" she spits out.

"You have no idea what you are toying with."

Delivered with something halfway between amazement and resignation, which, somehow, pisses her off even more. Patronizing fucking elf. Margo's tone drops into the acid, but studiously polite sarcasm of academic theory debate, which, truly, is not something she'd wish on her worst enemy, because from there, it's no holds barred.

"Then do enlighten me, by all means. Unless you came all the way out here to pick a fight over having to spend a little extra magica on healing me, in which case – do accept my sincere apologies. I'll make sure to pack more potions next time, and strive not to impose on your labor."

A kind of tremor goes through him, and then he grips her shoulders, and backs her into the wall, eyes, hot as coals, on hers. Margo stares into his face, and realizes, vaguely, that taunting him at this point is neither wise nor helpful – for either of them – but she can't quite help herself, because that thing is still screaming from under her skin, and whatever might drown it out is fair game. She meets his gaze as one would an adversary's, her jaw tight. She's pretty sure the elf growls. One of his hands firsts into her hair. It cushions the back of her head against the wood, but that's epiphenomenal – he uses her braid to angle her face up. Margo, who by then is in a burn all the bridges (and maybe blow up whatever's left for good measure) kind of mood, raises an eyebrow at him in challenge. He hooks the other hand into the belt of her leather greaves, knuckles cool against her skin, and pulls her against him. And then he presses her into the wall and is kissing her like a man starved.

The kiss is as chaotic as the mood – their teeth scrape together, and it takes them a few seconds to catch each other's rhythm. And then it's a mess of lips, and tongues, and hands, trying to find skin to touch, and coming up on entirely too much armor and clothing in the way.

He breaks the kiss. The hand that's not in her hair comes up to her neck, palm against the curve of her throat, fingers tightening ever so slightly. And then his lips find the hollow over the pulse point, just under her jaw. It's more a bite than a kiss, just shy of painful, and firm enough for adrenaline to mix in with the rest of the hormonal chaos. It goes straight to her core. A harsh breath escapes her, and Margo arches her back, bringing her hips flush against him. He drives her back into the wall, a thigh pressing between her legs and forcing her to widen her stance. And then his mouth is on hers again, stealing her breath.

She's not sure what makes her regain her wits. Maybe it's the glazed over expression in his eyes that she's pretty sure mirrors her own – anger mixed with lust, of course, but underneath it, that screaming anguish that can't find its way out. Or maybe it's the fact that she's had enough death in her life – and enough grief-fueled messy, emotionally wrenching sex in its wake – to recognize exactly what sort of path they've embarked upon. Or perhaps, after most of their more intimate encounters happened in the Fade, where she never experienced her dreamworld body as something other-than-hers, this feels so fundamentally different. Here, in the all too real drenching rain of the death bog, the unfamiliar triggers and predilections of her new reincarnation give every touch a vertiginous kind of "first time" quality that keeps her from zoning out and going blindly through the motions.

Or maybe it's just that, when it's all said and done, she likes him too damn much to use him in that way.

She tries to slow down, changing the register from frenzied to tender. It turns out to be no easy task, not without false starts. She succumbs to temptation, and nibbles at his lower lip, and he responds immediately, pressing her harder against the wall, his hands sliding down to her ass, his mouth on her neck again. She bucks against him, and grazes his earlobe with her teeth – because, well… it's right there anyway, might as well do something about it. She can feel the moan deep in his chest, against her ribcage, and isn't entirely sure who the sound belongs to. But then, she forces herself to bring her hands to his cheeks – and away from trying to work out how to unfasten his belt – and wipes the rain away with her thumbs. She's not sure he'll follow her cues, because, at this point, they're both almost too far gone to stop. But, after a few long moments, he does.

They stay tangled up - carefully, precariously still and not daring to move against each other, but also unwilling, or just plain unable, to come apart. At length, their breathing calms and the wildness drains out of them both. The kiss that follows turns into something deep, but slow, like the current of some wide, unhurried river. When they come up for breath, Solas moves his hands to cup the back of her head, gently this time, and brings their foreheads together. And then, after a second of hesitation, she responds by rubbing the tip of her nose against his.

When he looks down at her, the glaze is gone from his eyes. His face is a strange combination of shock, bewilderment, and uncertainty – and a kind of longing she doesn't really know how to interpret beyond recognizing something similar in herself, a sharp constriction that feels like vertigo and heartbreak, all rolled into one.

"Oh, vhenan, forgive me. I…" He swallows. "I got carried away."

She's not sure which part he's apologizing for – the argument, or what followed. A little chuckle – that bears an awfully close resemblance to a sob – escapes her.

"See? Just like stuffing plants in a sack."

It takes him a second to connect the dots, and then she gets a surprised, rueful little smile, and he shakes his head.

"If this is what your experience of 'stuffing plants in a sack' is like, then I am surprised you noticed the wolves at all. I think I may have willingly chosen to get eaten." And the statement almost launches Margo into resuming their activities, because this is the first time the flirt doesn't feel like just a cheeky provocation for the fun of it, but has real heat behind it.

Slowly, he steps back, and Margo shivers from the sudden chill of his absence. "But you are right. This… This was indefensible. It must stop."

Margo meets his gaze then.

"I never said that." And because she's pretty sure he's about to back-pedal in panic she steps closer, bridging the distance between them, and encircles his waist with her arms. That should make the fleeing in terror a little more cumbersome, she decides. "What I do think, first off, is that we really can do better than this. Let's not make Varric's day and reenact a 'Maile does Tevinter' with a cameo from the living dead."

His eyebrows draw together.

"Sometimes, ma da'nas, I truly have no idea what you are saying. Though, based on your earlier speech to the Avvar chiefling, I am fairly certain that the statement is at least somewhat scandalous."

She chuckles.

"What I am trying to say is that you can't drown existential dread in angry sex. Speaking from experience, existential dread has amazing buoyancy. It just won't sink. Also, it tends to make for awkward morning afters, which multiply the existential dread in the process. Which, in turn, is kind of the opposite of the desired effect." She realizes she's ranting, but at least the scream inside doesn't lacerate at her quite as much anymore.

Solas hesitates, then brings his own arms around her, and rests his chin against the top of her head. She huddles into him, ear against the hollow of his throat, and listens to the accelerated, but slowing heartbeat. They stand like that for a while, until the rain begins to drip in unpleasant little rivulets down the collar of Margo's armor.

Eventually, he steps back, hands on her shoulders, and peers down at her. Night has fallen by now, but she can still see his face in the eerie, iridescent glow of the bog.

Of course, the thrice-bedamned thing would phosphoresce.

"What ails you, Margo?" That feeling again of him tasting her name for its hidden properties. "Truly? You lost a friend, but I doubt it is just that. Or… you and the rogue had been close?"

She notices the slight hitch of hesitation on 'close' and shakes her head.

"I think we were comrades. But no, nothing like that. It's…" The task of trying to encapsulate the sheer enormity of the clusterfuck they're in feels like an impossible proposition. Or to capture exactly the sticky, hollow, inescapable feeling of guilt at having stolen another's life, however justifiably.

She turns it around instead.

"I'm not the only one who came out here with swords swinging. As much as I'd like to flatter myself in believing that this was all because you worry over me, I'm pretty sure that's not all there is to it. What ails you, Solas?"

She can hear the sigh, and his shoulders slump a little.

"I do worry over you, ma da'nas. There is no flattery to it. It is a simple fact. And I would appreciate it if you gave me less cause to do so."

She smiles. Really, warm and fuzzies? You're still there?

"But you are correct." He pauses, seemingly gathering his thoughts, or perhaps formulating an answer. Good on him for trying, Margo thinks to herself. "Whatever causes the fortune-bending aura – whether it is intrinsic to the mark or to the Herald herself – we must assume that feeding more magic through it will have unpredictable – and likely disastrous - consequences."

Margo's eyes widen. Of course. She hadn't even considered this, too focused on the minutia of their recent fights. The Breach. If Evie is to close the Breach, it stands to reason that powering the mark would amplify the jinxing forcefield. She cannot even imagine what effects this might have, but, considering the evidence, there is no reason to think that anything good will come of it. It is most likely to cause some kind of apocalyptic event.

She looks at Solas.

"So, really, what you're saying is that we're all very likely fucked anyway, pardon my Orlesian" she summarizes.

"In so many words? Yes."

Ah. Well, that puts existential dread in a whole new perspective.

Before she can respond, Solas tenses, and cocks his head, listening. She follows his lead – and, sure enough, she can hear someone walking up the staircase to the ramparts. Several someones, in fact, because strands of conversation drift to where they are standing.

"… do we have to do this now, Hero? Vintage Warden shit is all well and good, but it's late, and I for one, wouldn't mind a night cap and some sleep."

"It shouldn't take long. I just need you to pick the lock."

That's Blackwall, and he sounds like he will not be deterred.

"Blackwall is right. If we are to leave tomorrow, there is no sense in mounting a separate expedition just for this. I, for one, can't leave this awful bog fast enough."

"Aww, what's not to like, Seeker? Besides, it's not the place, it's the __company__." Varric, mocking.

Margo looks at her companion.

"Do we own it? Or do we go hide behind those sacks over there?"

He gives her a quick, critical once over. His eyes linger on her neck for a few seconds, and his expression turns a little guilty.

"Hmm. Your collar is short, and I do not currently have the magica to fix this."

Oh great. The elf left her a souvenir.

"No chance it'll just pass for a battle bruise?"

He shakes his head, and purses his lips in what looks suspiciously like a little smile.

"Not a one, I'm afraid."

Margo nods.

"We will never hear the end of it. Sacks it is."

* * *

I'd like to tell you that this chapter was brought on by something specific, but it sort of just happened. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Next up: Busted

As always, thanks a ton for the favs/follows/and especially your comments!


	20. Chapter 20: Complicated

_In which Margo, Solas, and Varric discuss strategy_

* * *

"Alright, Hero. Happy now? I believe we got everything.

The noises are difficult to identify with any kind of precision, but from their makeshift shelter, Margo thinks she can detect the sound of something heavy being lifted. Then there's a curse invoking an unspecified creator deity's nether regions, and something hits the cobblestones with a muted thwack.

"It's denser than it looks." That's Blackwall, and he sounds distinctly vexed.

"Do you need some help, Warden?" Cassandra, a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

"No, my Lady Seeker. I believe I can manage. Would you…"

"Yes, yes. I'll carry the torch."

Shuffling.

The barricade of burlap behind which they are wedged doesn't offer the best acoustics, but Margo allows herself a moment of cautious optimism. They got what they were looking for – why Varric felt the need to stand guard at the door while the other two were searching the room is beyond her, but, at last, it seems that they might be on their way. She steals a quick glance at Solas, who is sitting cross-legged next to her, his back propped against whatever's contained in the sacks – if she were to make an educated guess, she'd say it used to be sand, but, after exposure to time and the elements, has turned into something as solid as rock. The elf's expression is placid, and vaguely amused.

Bastard.

"Varric? Are you coming?"

More shuffling.

"Actually, Seeker, I think I'm going to stick around and look through those crates one more time."

A skeptically disapproving "hmpf" from Cassandra, and something that sounds a whole lot like 'grave robber.'

"What was that, Seeker?"

"I always forget, Varric, that you are, first and foremost, a thief."

"I'm an upstanding _businessman,_ Seeker. Besides, if it doesn't belong to anyone, it isn't stealing."

"Cassandra, with respect, I'd rather not keep holding this thing forever. Shall we? I am sure Varric will join us when he's done satisfying his acquisitiveness."

Damn the greedy dwarf.

The sound of two sets of armored boots hitting the cobblestones. A pause.

"I will remind you, Varric, that you are now an agent of the Inquisition. Therefore anything you should find that would benefit us should be turned over into the Inquisition's possession. And not, say, pocketed."

"Yes, Seeker, I promise that if I find anything relevant, you'll be the first to know."

Margo looks at the elf again. He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. And then reaches over, and arranges her braid to fall over her shoulder, and, incidentally, conceal the side of her neck that bears the incriminating evidence. He nods, apparently satisfied with the results.

Well then. She supposes he doesn't share her optimism. In either case, until Varric leaves, she supposes they're stuck.

Two sets of footsteps walking away, echoing down the stairs. And then, silence.

"Alright, you two. They're gone. You can come out now."

Of course.

Solas cocks an eyebrow at her in question, and Margo is suddenly struck by the profound ridiculousness of the situation. In fact, it reminds her distinctly of the time, at fourteen or fifteen, when she snuck back into the house past curfew, and came upon Baba, who, naturally, had been waiting patiently at the kitchen table, shelling beans. Baba had given her a quick once-over, nodded at the fresh hickey on her neck, and declared in a conversational tone: "The next time the boy feels the need to mark his territory, tell him I have a nice rowan in the yard he's free to piss on whenever the mood strikes him."

And that had been the end of that conversation, safe for an angelica seed tea added to Margo's morning breakfast routine.

She suppresses a fit of giggles, and stands up to face the music. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Solas unfold from his sitting position.

"Alright." Varric cocks his head, eyes narrowed in puzzlement. "I have to ask. I mean… why _here_? Really? I guess I just can't see it. I know this place is a hole, but there are probably better accommodations to be found than…" He makes a vague gesture meant to encompass their particular surroundings. "Whatever _this_ is. So, walk me through how this works. Purely out of authorial interest – for my next book."

Margo supposes that Thedas has not yet discovered the joy of gothic romances, and she's not about to give Varric any ideas on the subject.

"Whatever do you mean, Varric? We simply needed a quiet place to talk strategy."

Solas somehow manages to make the statement sound simultaneously completely innocent and thoroughly dirty.

"Oh ho ho! Is that what they call it nowadays?" Varric swaggers over to their hiding spot, and takes a seat on one of the burlap sacks closer to the ground. "So. Our mysterious apostate is going to own up to what he's been up to when no one's looking? Well, then. The plot thickens. Wait… that gives me an idea. Do you mean to say that all that time that the Herald and the advisors have been locking themselves in that war room of theirs to 'discuss strategy'…" Varric's expression turns speculative. "The ratio's a bit off, but you know what, Chuckles, this has narrative _potential_. I should really talk to my editor."

Margo steals a glance at Solas again. He looks entirely unperturbed. And… pleasantly polite. Well, she supposes that as long as she is not on the receiving end of said pleasant politeness, she doesn't have much quarrel with the phenomenon.

She turns to the dwarf. The incessant teasing _is_ annoying, but aside from that, Varric has been a steadfast ally for her on this side of the cosmic membrane. One way or another, of all the people she could imagine discussing the hex with first, he is the obvious choice.

If only he'd reign in the smarm.

"On that subject, Varric, I've been meaning to ask. How's Bianca?"

Varric stills, his eyes narrowing suspiciously, and Margo files the reaction away for examination at a later date. Could it be that the crossbow has an eponymous living counterpart?

"What do you mean, Prickly?"

Margo offers him an innocent smile.

"Your crossbow. Are you still experiencing occasional aiming issues?"

Varric's expression turns from teasing to deadly serious.

"Alright. So you weren't kidding. You really want to talk business."

Margo hesitates for a second, then nods. It still doesn't feel altogether comfortable – like a betrayal of Evie's trust. But she supposes that if the situation is as dire as they suspect, then the necessity to formulate a working solution is more pressing. She'll sit Evie down at the first opportunity she gets.

"And you, Chuckles? You're having similar concerns?"

Solas nods briefly.

"I have similar concerns for what has been happening with my spells, and, in the latest fight, with Vivienne's. And I am reasonably sure it affects everyone else as well."

Varric props his elbows on his knees, and sighs.

"I can't quite make sense of it. Prickly, you noticed it ever since the rift in the Hinterlands, didn't you?"

Margo shrugs, and then nods. Varric turns to Solas, expression grim.

"I've been watching you try to work around it since then. I'm also fairly sure Cassandra has noticed, but, to be honest, I couldn't quite work up the courage to talk to her outright, in case it was all in my head. It doesn't help that it's not bad every skirmish. The one in Redcliff's chantry with the Tevinter fellow went alright."

Margo's ears prick at the mention of a 'Tevinter fellow'. Were they fighting Tevinter mages?

"Yes." Solas's voice is thoughtful, and Margo supposes that he is trying to work out the implications of the differences between the skirmishes.

"Evie just kept messing with the rift, and the rift kept messing with the demons, so all in all, we did alright. But this past one was…

"We barely made it out alive" Solas finishes for him.

"Yeah. And some of us didn't." Varric meets Margo's gaze. "Sorry, Prickly."

She nods again, through a jolt of guilt that shoots through that part of her she has never had to really contend with before.

"So. What's the common denominator?" Varric asks, and it is clear to her that the dwarf's question is rhetorical – one that he knows the answer to, and yet wants it confirmed - the paradoxical desire for the definitive diagnosis. She looks at Solas, whose pleasantly polite mask has morphed into another expression, one that she has seen before, but has never actively worked to classify. The best she can come up with is 'resignation,' although she has a sense that it is less situational, and more intrinsic to the elf's very nature. A kind of profound, rooted fatalism.

Varric, for whatever reason, is looking to her for the answer, and she almost resents him for it.

"The main common denominator is Evie" she finally says.

Varric nods grimly.

"That much, I had figured. What I can't figure out is what the variations are caused by. Because this shit isn't bad _all_ the time. So what else?"

"We think it is a magic effect of sorts, centered on the Herald. If I were to speculate, I would say its effects fluctuate with the intensity of the fight. Whether caused by the mark or by something else, it appears to deflect danger from her at the expense of siphoning luck away from her allies."

Even before Solas has a chance to finish his explanation, Varric is nodding his understanding.

"Yeah, that sounds about right. Except I don't understand how it manages to affect _arrows_. I mean, I can see how it might affect _my_ aim – but Bianca?" He shakes his head. "Have you come across anything like this before, Solas?"

"I have not. Though that does not mean much in itself. Magic could take any number of forms – Tevinter magic differs from that of the Ferelden Circles, Nevarran magic from Elvhen. And there are always those who experiment."

"Prickly, what about you? Not that you're a magical specialist, and I don't know how much of your memory has returned. But at this point, any little bit might help."

Margo thinks. The idea of the luck siphon is in fact perfectly familiar: it is at the heart of almost all cosmologies of witchcraft. Whether you want to call it a hex, a curse, or the evil eye, the concept can be found in most cultural traditions she's familiar with. But in her world, magic, if it exists, is a quiet, unassuming sort of thing – in other words, nothing like it is here. And it stands to reason that something that works in a quiet, unassuming sort of way – even if, to her inexperienced eye, its effects still seem spectacular – could _almost_ escape notice, eclipsed by the more flashy magic practiced in Thedas.

Except that the Avvar shaman had some similar ideas.

"Could it be Avvar?" she finally asks. Solas raises his eyebrows. Varric cocks his head to the side with a puzzled expression.

"I am not familiar with Avvar culture" Solas volunteers. "But it seems that their priests and their mages are one and the same."

Margo nods.

"The big Avvar who decided to join up with us – Amund - I think he was the one who helped get us out of the cell, too." She suddenly remembers her encounter with Imshael, and the shaman's interventions. She shivers. "He had mentioned something about luck. He posed it as a… conceptual problem. Or a riddle of sorts."

Varric's squint looks speculative.

"Where are you _really_ from Prickly? Because you sure do talk fancy for a little scrap of an elven urchin."

She offers the dwarf a tight smile.

"Chuck it up to an obsessive reading habit."

Varric chuckles.

"That, I can't fault you for. So. The Avvar you said?"

She nods.

"He had asked me why two hunters on the same hunt might have radically different luck, where one gets mauled by a bear, and the other escapes unscathed." She pauses, trying to extrapolate the implications. "I think you can expand that – why does one hunter bring game back regularly, and another cannot. Is it always because the first hunter is better?"

"Is this a religious explanation for misfortune for the Avvar, or a more practical one do you think?" Solas asks. She shoots him a quick look. His face bears the by now familiar expression of intellectual curiosity. He's got it. This is really the heart of the question. Margo can't help but smile at him.

There is something very soft about the elf's return gaze, but he schools his features back to neutral quickly.

Margo forces her thoughts into a semblance of order, and away from a sudden and very distracting memory of recent events. In particular since the culprit of said distraction is standing right there, sporting a quietly speculative expression – and looking, at this particular moment, impossibly charming.

"When you two are done with the lingering looks, can we return to the matter at hand?" There's not much bite to Varric's sarcasm this time. In fact, he sounds like an indulgent grandparent, gently chiding two particularly rambunctious kids.

Margo hopes the blush isn't too obvious in the slightly greenish glow of the bog. She steals one more glance at the elf, and yup. It's faint, but you can certainly tell if you're looking. Fielding another attack of the warm and fuzzies at Solas's parallel reaction, she forges on. Luck. Witchcraft. Right. That was it.

"I think it's practical first – though they do sound like they have a complex cosmology that overlays the practicality."

"Wait, Prickly. Don't the Avvar worship demons?" There is very distinct distaste in Varric's question.

"I doubt that they _worship_ demons" Solas offers. "Although it is likely that they have their own system of transacting with spirits. As do mages everywhere."

Margo finds herself nodding. What had Amund called Imshael? A wishmonger _god_.

"Yes. I think they call them gods, but I do not think the relationship is one of worshipping, exactly. Not, at least, in the Chantry sense of the term." She taps her finger against her lips, trying to think about how to articulate the difference. When she looks up, Solas quickly averts his eyes, and pretends to gaze over the marsh. She suppresses a smile. Oh, sure, undead shit, still walking about aimlessly in glowing muck - fascinating stuff, that  
Varric just shakes his head.

Alright. They're all adults. She has a damn doctorate, for crying out loud. Time to get her shit together.

"In any case. I don't know if spirits are the _only_ gods the Avvars have, or if it's a more encompassing category." Margo tries to remember whether the shaman had said anything about what happens to ancestors. Do Avvar ancestors become place spirits, in the way that they sometimes do in Earth's shamanic traditions? Or do they reincarnate? Or go to some other, better place – a Valhalla of sorts? "But if I understand what Amund was trying to say correctly, for the Avvar luck is not a random, unknowable quantity. It's something to specifically negotiate over with their gods. And it's read as a kind of message – misfortune is taken to be a sign of a god's ill favor, and therefore a reminder to reestablish a good relationship, as it were."

"See, Prickly, this is where we go into complicated theological shit, and I get nervous. Because this whole thing…" another vague gesture, but one that encompasses the sky this time "feels to me like a pretty giant sign of the Maker's ill favor – of the 'screw you' variety - and I have a feeling he's not the negotiating type."

"I think the important question" Solas offers, returning them to the problem at hand, "is whether the cause of the luck-bending aura is something specific to the Herald, as the bearer of the mark, or to Evelyn Trevelyan."

"Or whether it's a combination." Varric sighs, and rubs his chin, a sound like scraping sandpaper. "So I suppose first things first, we need to find out how long this has been going on. Prickly, you're probably in the best position to ask Evie. I think she's noticed that at least the three of us – Seeker included – have been giving her funny looks, and I don't want the kid to get defensive or evasive about it."

"Do you think she knows?" Margo asks, and looks at the two men. "You've fought alongside her a lot more than I have. Is she aware that there is a problem?"

"Oh, she's aware that there is a problem. She apologizes profusely after every fight for being clumsy and getting underfoot. But I personally don't think the kid realizes _what_ the problem is. She knows she's not trained for combat. Which in itself is pretty damn strange, come to think of it – what, in the name of Andraste, was Lord Trevelyan thinking? Why didn't she get proper military training?"

Margo looks to Solas, who is balancing back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"Why would you find her lack of training strange? A noble's youngest daughter might not garner much attention, overlooked in favor of his older children or his sons."

"See, Chuckles, that's where you're wrong. I have a pretty good sense of how these nobles go about things. First off, you always train all of them, in case something happens to the heir. And second, it's not like she has anything better to do – the reason they get such thorough training is to keep the kids occupied, and out of the parent's hair."

Margo nods her head in agreement.

"I think Varric is right, I don't believe Evie was overlooked. My impression was quite the opposite – that her father was overprotective and kind of… omnipresent. She does cite the guy every three sentences, like he is the final authority on any topic known to man."

Solas nods.

"Then, Lethallan, it falls on you to find out more about our Herald, and hope that the answer lies in her past, and not in the magic of the mark. I fear that should it be the latter, it would bode badly for our prospects at the Breach."

Varric sighs again.

"Well, shit. I haven't thought of that. And I thought we were having problems _now_."

By the time the three of them come off the rampart, the camp is quiet. Solas bids them goodnight first, with a soft "sleep well" in Margo's direction that sounds somewhere between a question and an invitation. Varric lingers for a few seconds, watching the elf walk away towards one of the tents.

"What's going on, Varric?" she asks, because it is fairly clear that the dwarf wants a private word.

"Listen, Prickly. I know I like to tease the two of you – I can't resist, you both get so damn flustered about it – but if you want to keep whatever it is you two are doing under wraps, I will do my best to help. I can tell 'complicated' when I see it, and I'm the last person who's going to judge you for it."

Margo frowns.

"I appreciate your offer Varric, but… what do you mean? By complicated?"

Varic chuckles humorlessly.

"Ah, Prickly, you haven't been in Haven for a while. Last time we were in Redcliff, we picked up this Tevinter mage – well, more accurately, he picked _us_. He hasn't officially joined yet – I get a sense it all depends on whether Evie ends up getting the mages or the Templars involved – but he's been hanging around, to Nightingale's great irritation and puzzlement. In my opinion, the guy sounds pretty sincere in his offer to help, but he's a Vint, as Bull would have it." He sighs. "Anyway, since you now have a reputation as the expert on Tevinter mages… No offense, Prickly. I'm sure it wasn't like that.

Oh no.

The dwarf shakes his head.

"I thought I'd give you a heads up. Leliana… used to be a bard, so I think that sort of thing came with the territory for her. My guess would be that she will throw you at the Tevinter, and see how you do. If you can find out anything interesting – presumably, using methods that others won't, at least I suppose that's the assumption – then great. And if you can't, well. This is a pecking order thing as much as anything else. You did lose a patrol. Just because she hasn't killed you or removed extra digits for it doesn't mean she has forgotten."

Varric scrapes his chin again, a meditative gesture.

"So, as I was saying. Complicated."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Angelica Archangelica , which in some traditions of European herbalism has been used to control fertility, and which may or may not have an equivalent species in Thedas, but either way might be something that Margo will need to look into at some point in the future._

 _Next up: back to Haven, comedy of errors style shenanigans._

 _As always, thank you so much for your reading eyes. I know the updates have slowed down a bit, but life is busy. I'll try to keep them coming._


	21. Chapter 21: Unsettled

_In which Margo has to contend with the past._

* * *

When Margo opens her eyes in the Fade, she expects some version of the now familiar dreamscape – the field of summer grasses, perhaps, or the Escher sketch staircases, or some place in Haven.

She also expects the cosmic asshole to show up, even if she doesn't admit it to herself until she's surprised that he doesn't.

But the Fade decides to defy her expectations. She finds herself in the kitchen of Baba's old house – the clay stove in the corner, with its obligatory pot of baked milk; the rickety old table, one of its wobbly legs stabilized by a box of matches; the herbs – inula and fireweed and thyme hanging in bushels from the rafters. The tablecloth, plastic sheen worn down to the underlying fabric. The pictures in the 'red corner,' where the icons would go if Baba weren't so performatively the village witch – a mixture, untenable, of communist leaders and Christian saints, of benevolent and wrathful deities harnessed from different pantheons, of chubby little figures molded of salt dough and given small offerings of milk, sugar, and cigarettes, and of the faded black and white photos of kin. All the latter, conspicuously, and somehow unsurprisingly, women. The matriline. Roots of her roots.

In Baba's view of kinship, men are an incidental abstraction.

She sits at the table, and pulls the tea kettle towards herself, giving it an exploratory sniff. It's an earthy, scraping, abrupt sort of scent – fireweed with something else, hypericum maybe, and a cold spice in the finish, like black currant leafs.

There's a cup. She pours herself some of the steaming, fragrant liquid.

"Ah. My little thistle. You have come for a visit again." Baba comes out of the bedroom, wiping her hands on her apron, hair wrapped in the usual kerchief.

Margo stills. For a split second, she suspects subterfuge – Imshael taking on her grandmother's familiar shape. But, with another look at the old woman, she relaxes. No. She would know Baba even if she forgot herself. There is no replicating her.

"Not quite as fun as calling on the wolfling, hmm?" Baba chuckles. There's a kind of mocking disapproval to the old woman's features – and an intimately familiar one at that. "Well. It's good to stop by sometimes. You can't forget where you're rooted. I was just going to start on the jam."

"Baba, what is this place? Why are you here? Are you…" Margo swallows. She doesn't know what to make of this gift that feels like a punch in the gut. She has a vivid recollection of scattering Baba's ashes under the aspen that grows at the top of the bend in the river, the bank speckled with the purple and yellow blooms of broomrapes.

"Are you real?"

The old woman considers her, a smile on her lips. Even in old age, Baba still has a kind of infectious smile, creasing the skin around her eyes in a starburst of crowfeet. It used to feel like the face of her own future, and Margo mourns the loss of that intimate, irreplaceable similarity. The only parallel left is her new body's eyes, one shade paler, a less saturated gunmetal gray – and so unlike her former body's greenish hazel. It is a small thing, but somehow, in the dream logic, it feels important that even though everything else is different, she should have inherited something of Baba's eyes.

"As real as anything is around here, my heart." Baba picks up a tub of gooseberries from under the table, and settles on a stool next to Margo, a paring knife and a miniature spoon in hand, ready to seed her harvest before she starts on the jam making. "You have forgotten your lullabies, my thistle. I have taught you better than that."

Margo frowns at the dream's strange leaping logic. But before she can ask Baba what she means, the old woman begins to hum, and Margo stills. She knows the song. Baba used to sing it to her well into her early childhood – a strange, frightening little tale with a sweet, simple, repetitive melody. Baba never sang it to Jake - her brother got all the cheerful songs. But not Margo. And, years later, she would sing it to her own daughter, for the time that had been allocated to them by whatever cosmic, ungenerous hand that's in charge of such things.

"Baby, baby, rock-a-bye," Baba sings in her cracked, old woman's voice. "On the edge you mustn't lie. Or the little grey wolf will come. And will nip you on the tum. Tug you off into the wood. Underneath the willow-root."

Margo shudders, suddenly really hearing the words.

"Baba, why do you call him wolfling?" There. That seems like the relevant question. Doesn't Imshael refer to Solas as a wolf?

The old woman shrugs. Another eviscerated gooseberry plunks into a copper pot.

"There are many names. I call you 'little thistle.' Or 'my heart.' Or 'my soul.' All are accurate. We are known by different things, none of them sufficient. Your mother called your lelek 'Margo.' Not a bad name, but not for a breath soul. Besides, the breath soul's gone now, so you don't need to worry about that." Another gooseberry joins the others in the pot. "But I name your iz. Only your iz matters, little thistle. That is where the roots grow. It's what makes us return."

Margo frowns, trying to piece together the scraps of memory. Baba had explained to her the dual soul concept when she was still very young – five, maybe, or six. She'd never questioned it before – perhaps because she'd never questioned Baba's own messy ethnic identity, somewhere between Slavic and Finno-Ugric and Rroma, and staunchly uncommitted to a single frame, or even a single language. Baba, the compulsive code-switcher. But the belief in multiple souls, she remembers from when she was roped into teaching a history of religion course by her department – outside of her area of direct specialty, but what can you do? There are versions of this scattered throughout different shamanic traditions. And yet, now she wishes she had paid more attention. She could never decide whether this concept of soul plurality was intrinsic to Baba's own beliefs, or something she had picked up somewhere along the way.

In retrospect, Baba's wild, indiscriminate syncretism – that tendency to gather everything, plants, and myths, and gossip, and mix them all together – suddenly feels like a careful practice of dissimulation. Hard to say what's hidden in the mixtures.

"Why did she name me Margo?" she finally asks. It seems like as relevant a question as any. "Did she like daisies?" she ventures.

The old woman shakes her head. "No, my soul. It has nothing to do with daisies." Another gooseberry goes _kerplunk_ into the copper pot. "The girl took after her father, so didn't understand about pearls anyway." Baba sighs. "Sometimes it skips a generation, the knowing. It's a scattered sort of thing."

Margo wants to ask Baba what she means, but the dream vacillates, a ripple disrupting its very fabric.

"Before you go, my heart." Baba fixes her with her graphite-gray eyes. "The girl. Not a child, but forced to be one. You must help, but ask nothing from the other one. Never ask for anything. Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. And should he offer, do not accept. Some trades are too dear."

And then the dream shudders, and bursts like a soap bubble.

They set out from the hell bog earlier than expected, hoping to make the day's journey swiftly, and Margo is relieved they do not linger. It would have been nice to use the time to catch up with Evie, but a crow lands on Scout Harding's shoulder in the early morning, when the perennial drizzle isn't much more than a thick, ominous mist. It is a message signed by Master Adan, and he wants a whole collection of ingredients.

Evie and her entourage move on ahead without the rest of the scouting party. She gets a pointed nod from Varric, a quick hug from Evie, who asks her to stop by for tea later in a voice that's almost pleading.

She catches Solas's gaze on her.  
"A moment of your time?" he asks, with a quick glance towards the others.

She nods, and approaches, still feeling slightly thrown by the rapid switches between formality and intimacy. At this point, almost every sentence they exchange in public feels laden with double-meaning.

"I came across this when we traveled to the Avvar's keep. The Herald thought you could put it to good use."

He hands her an old, battered journal. The paper is warped, and the writing blurry, as if the book had been water-logged a few times. Which, considering the local climate, it probably was.

She leafs through it, careful not to damage the journal further. Most of it sounds like completely demented ravings, but from what she can gather, it is also a technical manual for making a poison. Something called "tears of the dead." Apparently, even dead shit weeps, probably from too much aimless milling around in a horrid bog. And then, she realizes the darn thing needs Death Root – yes, the very death root also known as Brother Rufus's tentacled monstrosity that started this whole thing – and Margo doesn't know whether to cackle maniacally or break into sobs.

Being by and large an incorrigible optimist, she opts for the former.

"Something amusing, Lethallan?" She notes the way the smile settles in his eyes before it reaches down to his lips.

"An excess of cosmic irony" she offers. "But, thank you. This is perfect."

"It was my pleasure." Again, the subtle smile, a formal little bow, and the inescapable sense of double-entendre. And then, he turns around, and glides back towards the others.

Only Blackwall stays behind. She's puzzled at this at first, and for a time, they walk on in silence.

At some point, he clears his throat. She shoots him a look, but the bearded bear looks distinctly uncomfortable.

"Alright. You're making this awkward. Out with it."

He clears his throat again.

"You know plants pretty well, then?"

Margo shrugs. Earth plants, sure. Here, she's only scratched the surface.

"I have some sense of the practical stuff, but I'm just starting on the Alchemy path. I don't know half of what I should, and not even a hundredth of what I would like." She pauses. "What's on your mind?"

"Do you know much about… flowers?"

Margo frowns. Where the hell is this going? She pulls Aunt Ignes's compendium out of its usual pocket. It had somehow survived the Avvar's imprisonment – for whatever reason, her captors chose not to take the book from her. Perhaps they simply missed it. It is so worn from constant use that it sort of blends into the coat's lining.

"I can look something up if you want. Any specific use you need? Poison? Healing? Something else?"

He clears his throat again, and she thinks she notices a blush creeping up above the beard.

"Ahm. I suppose ornamental."

Ornamental? Aha. Margo decides the bear is actually quite endearing in his discomfort. And he just seems so profoundly decent, that she can't even bring herself to teasing him. She wonders who the lucky recipient might be.

"Ok, ornamental I'm less familiar with, but lets see if we can find something." She leafs through the book, quickly scanning the pictures. She has seen something that looked aesthetically pleasing.

"How do you feel about Crystal Grace?" She hands him the book for examination.

He takes a long look at the page.

"These are beautiful. I thought I saw something like this in the Hinterlands."

Margo shrugs.

"I haven't seen them myself, but I'm going to assume from the drawing that it's a vine. I'd add a sweetener to the water, and maybe a bit of vinegar, if the kitchen has it. Or even a few drops of a clear spirits. They'll last longer that way."

He nods. They walk in silence for a while.

"You aren't going to pry?" he finally asks.

"Nope." Margo responds. "But if you want to talk about it, you know where to find me."

A long pause.

"Thank you."

For the rest of the journey, the time Margo doesn't spend walking is occupied with stuffing burlap sacks full of material medica.

By the time they get to Haven, it's early evening. She hauls the sacks of ingredients to the apothecary, with a little help from Blackwall, but Adan is nowhere to be found – as usual. She briefly considers going to bed early, but decides against it. Her dreams feel like they require entirely too much intellectual effort, and she feels drained and unmoored, and as if she's forgetting something that needed to get done.

Margo exits the apothecary with a vague hope for a hot dinner that does not involve things that are shaped like an armadillo cross-bred with a pig and taste like bog water. The courtyard is eerily empty, and there is no light coming from inside the nearby houses. Which is why Margo doesn't notice the shadow stalking along the wall until it is too late.

Before she can so much as blink, she finds herself flat on her back, in the snow, with an unfamiliar elf's knee crushing her throat. "Well. There you are." A redhead – striking in her own way, with delicate features spoilt by a habit of professional cruelty. Margo tries to wiggle from under the woman, and away from the knee crushing her windpipe, but the elf pulls a thin, stiletto-shaped dagger, and brings it right under Margo's left eye. She stills, attempting to conserve the little breath she has left. The world begins to fade out at the edges, her ears simultaneously ringing with a high, whining keen, and full, as if stuffed with cotton.

"I don't know how you've managed to convince Leliana that I somehow put you up to it, you ungrateful little shit, but don't think that I'm going to let this go, whatever your status with the Inquisition is." The voice, which to Margo sounds so far away it is at the edge of irrelevant – like a muted TV in another room – is oddly flat, almost expressionless, despite the harsh content. With what remains of her thinking capacity, Margo concludes that this must be the mythical Charter. "But I hear you've had a whole personality change since your little improvisation at the Breach. Made yourself indispensable, did you? Ingratiated yourself with the Herald. Clever, that." The elf drags the blade of her stiletto in a vertical line across Margo's cheek. The pain cuts through the fog of asphyxiation, but it too is distant, as if it's happening to someone else. As is the feeling of something warm trickling down her cheekbone, and into her ear.

"So. Seeing how I can't just put you down like the rabid bitch in heat that you are… As you seem to think that fucking that Tevinter bastard was worth the lives of five of my people, you owe me five deaths. At my request, and to my specifications." The elf brings her face close to Margo's, and, in the absence of any peripheral vision to speak of, it is all that she can see. "Pay up, and I might consider the debt settled." And then, the redhead hacks up in the back of her throat, and spits into Margo's face.

And in the next instant, she's gone.

* * *

 _This chapter, as most of this fic, is brought to you by a bad case of insomnia. Also, soul dualism, which is an interesting aspect of a number of religious traditions. Here, I'm pulling out of Finno-Ugric folklore._

 _There is a highbrow-ish Easter Egg in this chapter. When Baba is giving Margo advice, the statement "never ask for anything..." is a citation from Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita." This is also where Margo's name is borrowed from._

 _Next up: More Solas and Margo, some Evie, and we meet Dorian._

 _As always, a million thanks for your reviews, follows, and reading eyes. A quick PSA: this fic is LONG. Right now it's clocking in at about 300k words of what's already written, and that's only Act I. So, like, if you're here and intend on staying, I'm afraid this is a long haul sort of affair. You've been warned..._


	22. Chapter 22: Fade to Black

_In which Solas and Margo discuss French philosophy. Sort of._

* * *

It takes Margo a few minutes to regain the use of her limbs. Eventually, lying supine in the snow in inarticulate terror becomes a profoundly unpleasant experience, considering that said snow is melting and seeping into the back of her clothes. Margo sits up with a groan, rolls a loosely packed snowball, and uses it to wipe off her face.

It comes away a bloody mess.

She gets up, slowly, one foot, then the other, legs still wobbly from oxygen deprivation. Somewhere half-way nausea overtakes her, and she leans down, hands on knees, trying to breathe through it. Following all that, she has absolutely no idea what to do next. In fact, more generally, she feels completely disengaged from her experience – as if she is piloting her body by remote control, from a galaxy far, far away. But then, the smarting in her cheek makes itself known, and she is promptly slammed back into the all-too-real here and now.

She hesitates. It seems that the most logical order of business would be to stop the blood dripping down the front of her coat – because leather is a bitch to clean, and while she supposes she could ask Solas to perform his nifty cleaning spell, she's pretty sure he's got better things to do with his magica than offer late night dry-cleaning services. She makes her way back to the apothecary – stumbling only once on the way, which she files away as a win. An elfroot potion later, and the skin on her cheek begins to tingle, but when she touches the cut, her fingers still come away stained red. Hmm. She wipes the blood off on a rag, locates a generic poison antidote, and downs that too, just in case.

An elfroot salve and another health tonic later, and the blood is still flowing. Sluggish, but there. It's been a while since she's had to think about needing stitches – what with the magical healing always on hand.

She feels a little sheepish knocking on the elf's door just on account of cosmetic concerns. Her body already has a truly impressive collection of scars, just none of them on her face. What's one more, right? And besides, she actually feels a kind of vague sympathy for Charter, that seems to be in inverse proportion to her antipathy for Maile. She's not sure that had she been in Charter's shoes, she would have exercised such restraint. Maile really did fuck this up spectacularly, and then Margo herself had added to the mess by her clumsy attempts to survive Leliana. That Maile's particular brand of poison wasn't the one Margo herself would have picked doesn't mean that the outcome is entirely unexpected – certainly, she didn't sow what she's now reaping, but cause and effect, right? As Jake would have it, karma is a bitch.

Still. It is hard not to feel a sense of ownership – or at least some kind of custodianship - for the body you're squatting in after a while. Like it or not, this is the one she now has – the chances of another body hop are pretty slim in her estimation. Also, the blood's getting everywhere, and making a mess of things. And it hurts. So she marches over, and knocks on the hut's door. The windows are dark, but that might not mean anything. Considering how much time Solas must be spending in the Fade, she suspects that, if left to his own devices, he likely sleeps as much as her former cat.

Maybe cats are Fade walkers. That would certainly explain the sleeping patterns.

There is no answer, so she knocks again. She's about to turn around – although between the prospect of tracking down the Iron Lady and sporting a picturesque scar on her cheek, the latter seems vastly more appealing (after all, the Seeker rocks one of those just fine) – when the door opens.

Solas is in the doorway and looks… woken up. There's a slightly disheveled, rumpled softness to him, which takes Margo by surprise, and so they stare at each other for a few seconds with what is probably matching bewildered expressions. And then he focuses, the sleepiness draining out of him, and he's back to his usual deceptively unassuming sharpness.

His eyes widen at the sight of the bloody mess. "Da'nas, what happened?"

Margo is a little too tired to process the switches in nicknames – she's starting to get a hang of his lexis, and this one she identifies as the private, but not overly intimate endearment. Possibly more than friends, less than other things.

"Maile's bad taste in men catching up to me," she offers, and gestures to her cheek.

Solas's expression turns icy. "Who did this to you?"

She has the distinct impression that he might be misinterpreting what she meant. "Charter." At his confused look – clearly, his interpretation had taken him elsewhere – she shakes her head. "She was in her right. Maile did betray her, however inadvertently. I just… it won't stop bleeding."

Solas closes his fingers around her forearm and guides her inside, promptly shutting the door behind her. Then he steps closer – his touch gentle on her face – and peers at the cut. Margo turns her head to the side to offer him a better viewing angle.

"I took an antidote already, but what do you think? Some special kind of poison? Or just a really deep cut?"

The elf's voice is grim. "I do not believe this is caused by poison. Perhaps an enchanted weapon. A rune, most likely."

Runes. Because what was really missing from her life is runes. Although… That's an interesting proposition. Are runes actually powerful text or are they material, or alchemical in nature? "A rune? As in, some kind of sacred writing?"

"Is this what runes are in your world?"

Margo nods. "Something like that. Not here, I take it?"

"A mineral, usually infused with the essence left after a demon is killed. Or, sometimes, a spirit."

Margo notes the hard edge to his voice. She steals a glance at him from the corner of her eyes, and the way his jaw is set suggests that he doesn't fully approve of the practice. "My world has a history of pretty appalling food chains as well, for what it's worth."

He passes his hand over her cheek. There's a sensation of something burning itself out, and she winces at the pain, but then the jolt of the spell is knitting her skin together, the experience accompanied by a furious tingling. Through all this, it dawns on Margo just how many times over the last few weeks he's patched her up. Although she supposes that almost everyone at camp is pretty damn familiar with this particular sensation. They really do need more mages. (And she really should not deceive herself into feeling too special.)

The nausea from her damaged throat is gone, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

"There. It has stopped. I am reasonably certain the scar should fade in time. It is faint as it is."

He looks… perturbed. And aggrieved.

"Well, what's one more scar, right?" she shrugs, matter-of-factly.

He seems a little at a loss, but then regroups. "Ah. You do not fully think of this body as your own yet?"

Margo shrugs. "It isn't my own, technically." She tries to formulate the strange, disarticulated relationship. "Most of the time, I no longer notice. As long as I don't spend time around mirrors – which, fortunately for me, are in short supply in Haven anyway."

He hesitates, and then his hand comes to her cheek. He brushes away a stray lock of hair. "Perhaps you should. It may help you domesticate your new appearance." Another short hesitation, but then he just shrugs. "You are beautiful. There is a certain value in acknowledging that for yourself." The statement delivered as fact, like an observation about the weather.

She meets his gaze. "I know you find Maile's appearance pleasing. But I have little to do with that. Or it with me."

"There is nothing about Maile I find pleasing, da'nas. But my point is elsewhere. In what way would your original body be a more accurate reflection of whatever you call 'I'? Is Cassandra defined by her cheekbones, and not her faith? Varric by his chest hair and not his wit? Blackwall by his beard, and not his loyalty?"

That surprises a chuckle out of her. "Solas, Varric _is_ defined by his chest hair. Scratch that. He defines himself by his chest hair. Have you seen his outfits? In fact, I think the chest hair is an inherent part of his wit."

He returns her smile, and Margo's eyes travel to his lips involuntarily. Had there truly been a time when she hadn't been sure whether he was handsome?

"My point is that the way you animate this body, or any other, is unique to you. You choose to inhabit it in a certain way, and that is what I was referring to."

Margo sighs, and then shakes her head and chuckles. Did the elf just summarize Bourdieu's concept of _habitus_ while turning it into a compliment? Come to think of it, it would have been so much easier to explain to her undergrads if they'd had the concept of the Fade.

Maybe they can get to Foucault next.

She squashes the mental babbling. In either case, she understands his point perfectly well. She only has to think about the way Imshael wears his doppelgänger disguise to get a very clear illustration. And now, she somehow no longer feels quite so disembodied, and, despite this, the prospect of the scar does not phase her either. And to add insult to injury, she suddenly really wants to find a mirror.

Ugh. From French philosophy to vanity, in one fell swoop. The damn elf will be the death of her.

"Have I mentioned that you are a shameless flirt?"

His smile turns amused. "So you keep telling me. But why shameless? If it is something we both enjoy, what would obligate us to embarrassment? Besides, I am simply stating what is already the case."

Margo cocks her head, suddenly indecisive. The ball is in her court again, but her eyes just keep returning to his lips, as if drawn there by some irrevocable gravitational force. She forces them back up, and meets his gaze. Naturally, he has noticed, and his expression is just shy of teasing. That, and he looks entirely too smug.

"Distracted?" His voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, and there's something about the quality of that soft, intimate tone that shoots a jolt of acute vertigo through her. It feels like free falling, and for a few long seconds she can't shake it to save her life. And then she realizes, with an emotion awfully close to terror, that as far as her existence in this world is concerned, the elf is at once the hurricane, and the eye of the storm. Poison and remedy.

Another untenable ontological contradiction.

Well, then. Playing coy with herself at this stage seems just plain silly. This has long since evolved beyond the inoffensive crush phase, so no point in pussyfooting about it. But this too shall pass, right? Oh dear Unspecified Creator Deity, please let the Persians be right about that, because she's fucking drowning in this.

She regroups, and looks at him square in the eyes. "If you must fish for a compliment, then yes. Distracted. But…" She raises a finger, and waves it in the air for good measure in the universal sign of 'I am about to make an important point here.' "There is an imbalance in our relationship. I am always the one coming to you for help, and I have a feeling I'm accruing a massive karmic debt. So, first, I hope you don't charge interest. And, second, is there something I can do to repay you? To balance the scales a little?"

Solas's eyebrows draw together in puzzlement. "A _karmic_ debt? This is a concept from your world?"

Ah. Right. Wrong colloquialism again. How does she explain the notion of karma? It is her turn to frown, trying to think through a formulation that would port well. She catches him observing her through the process, and there is a little smile on his lips, as if he's enjoying the view. Well. Nothing wrong with a man who likes the sight of you thinking.

"Your world may have something similar. It actually just means action and refers to the relationship of cause and effect, though I'm simplifying. What I'm trying to say is that I am constantly the recipient of your beneficial actions – and I'm afraid I have little to offer in return. I can maybe pilfer lyrium potions for you, but considering the stuff is addictive and quite likely toxic, that's hardly a good way to settle the debt."

Solas seems to weigh her explanation. "Not all my actions have benefited you, ma da'nas, even when they were intended as such. Not to mention that I am fairly certain you have also saved my life on multiple occasions. As to 'settling debts,' I do not like the finality of the phrase. Is not the goal of such a settlement to terminate a relation one finds burdensome?"

Margo chuckles despite herself. Clever man. "Let me rephrase then. Is there anything you want? Or need?"

She expects a cheeky flirt in response, so when his expression turns deadly serious – and a little forlorn – Margo isn't quite ready for it. "Your wish," he says finally.

Margo frowns, puzzled.

"I would enjoy learning more about your world. Or any other topic of your choosing. I have… many questions. Perhaps even over wine, as in the image you had crafted from the Fade."

Ah. The hypothetical memory bubble she sent him from the Avvar prison. She's surprised he still remembers. She's so thrown by this request, however, that she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. "Do you in fact drink? Wine I mean?"

Solas shrugs. "On occasion. I did more frequently in the past. Many lifetimes ago, it seems."

It's Margo's turn to frown. Does he mean his younger years, or does he literally mean a different life? She wouldn't put it entirely past him to remember his former reincarnations, if such things exist.

"You may bring the wine, and we will consider part of the debt, if there is one, repaid." Another small, very private smile.

Margo rubs her face with both hands, as much out of exhaustion as to distract herself from the now apparently permanent impulse to kiss him. Right. Adding wine into this mix may not be the most idiotic idea she's ever had, but it's definitely got its eye on the hall of fame.

Let's pour this here canister of kerosene on yonder garbage fire. What could possibly go wrong?

Instead, she tells him about Charter's debt repayment plan. Solas stays silent for a long time. She avoids looking at him – because she doesn't particularly want to find an expression of pity on his features, even though she has a strong suspicion that this is precisely what she would encounter if she checked. But he surprises her. When she eventually steals a glance, it isn't pity. It is pure, white-hot anger mixed with disgust, and overlaid with that now familiar resignation. But then the resignation wins over – that deeply rooted fatalism again.

Whatever it is about the emotion, it propels him to act. He steps closer, puts his arms around her, and pulls her in. She returns the embrace, snaking her arms around his waist. He plants a soft kiss on her forehead.

"One day at a time," he says quietly. "I, for one, am not convinced that any of us will survive past the closing of the Breach, considering the Herald's unique properties, so the prospect of you being turned into an assassin against your will might never come to pass."

What sort of fucked up mess is she in that this is, in fact, reassuring? "Ever the optimist," she chuckles, and looks up.

He tightens his arms around her. "I have not been accused of optimism in a long time."

She leans her forehead against his chest, and closes her eyes. "I, apparently, have an excess of it – idiotic optimism, that is - so if you'd like some, I'm happy to share."

She feels the quiet chortle reverberate through her. "I will keep the offer in mind."

They stay silent for a time.

"You are exhausted. How is your dreaming?"

She glances up at him again. She's not surprised that he can pick up on it. "A bit much, honestly."

He nods.

"Any more visitation from Imshael?" There is a banked tension in his voice.

Should she tell him about the bathhouse dream? It just feels so wrong, somehow, and she still can't shake the feeling that maybe she is the one bringing it on herself. "Imshael is… around. But it's not just him. I have some other very vivid dreams – the problem is more one of control than anything else, I suspect."

He seems to reflect on this, then nods. "You have a facility with entering the Fade. And your dreams are… very visceral. You do not touch the Fade lightly. I suspect this is because it is the more natural state for you, at least for now. But you do not know how to control it, nor are you, in fact, a mage in any conventional sense of the term. My ability to help you – or train you – is limited by my own magic." He pauses, seemingly vacillating over some kind of internal decision. "But I could control the dreaming for you, and allow you to regain some of your strength. Or at least, some equilibrium."

Margo looks at him in mild puzzlement. "You're offering to stabilize my dreams for me?" She's seen him do this before, so it seems like the logical conclusion.

He shakes his head. "No. I am offering you Fadeless sleep, at least for a moment. If you wish to lay your head somewhere and rest without dreaming, my bed is at your disposal. At close proximity, I can buffer you from the Fade for a time."

Margo's eyes widen. "You would do this?"

"I cannot – and would not – sever you from the Fade. That action is… reprehensible. And you must learn to control this ability of yours sooner rather than later. But…"

"Please. That would be awesome." She can't help it. She beams at him.

"Provided you do not mind sharing my bed." There's definitely a twinkle of humor in his eyes.

Margo gives him a mockingly disapproving squint. "I suppose there's been a precedent, so what's another time? Or are you fishing for another compliment?"

"I am offering to help." Now he's just looking cheeky. "But should you feel the need to offer a compliment in return, I am all ears."

Margo shakes her head, and then just laughs.

"You know what my grandmother would have said about you? That you're a very special kind of bad news."

Solas's eyebrows draw together, but he is smiling. Margo decides she finds the expression rather fetching. "Ah, a backhanded compliment. I suppose it will have to do."

The next five minutes are spent restocking the fireplace. She hangs her coat on the back of the chair – again. At this point, this is becoming a habit. Kicks off her boots. And occupies the spot by the wall. Solas sits next to her.

"I have to be awake to do this," he explains.

Margo is about to say something, but then a jaw-splitting yawn overtakes her.

"Wake me up when you get tired? I just need a couple of hours of deep sleep."

He nods, and pulls the thin blanket over her.

"I am profoundly in your debt," she mumbles.

She thinks he says something in Elvhen, but she's too tired to parse it. In the next moment, she's out like a light, and there are, blissfully, no dreams.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the habitus, which Solas has managed to turn into yet another flirt.

Next up: Evie.


	23. Chapter 23: Tangled Webs

When Margo wakes up, it is the first time in days she feels actually, legitimately well-rested. It takes her a moment to determine where she is – in no small part because she is being stared down by the portrait of the villainous looking abbot – or whoever he is - with steepled fingers who, for reasons beyond her ken, hangs on the opposite wall. How Solas manages to fall asleep with that thing presiding over the surroundings is anybody's guess. She'd at least put a sheet on it.

The shaft of sunlight that comes through the window lets Margo know in no uncertain terms that she'd slept in late. She cannot, for the life of her, remember the last time she woke up after daybreak.

She sits up and looks around. The hut is empty, its inhabitant nowhere in sight. She feels the coarse linen surface of the sheet with her hand. Sure enough, there still is a lingering trace of warmth. So Solas had stayed beside her – whether sleeping or awake – and must have departed only recently.

She gets up, shrugs on her jacket, and pulls on her boots.

And then does a sneaky, theatrically spy-like maneuver which makes her feel vaguely ridiculous, where she peers out the side of the window to check if the courtyard is empty.

It is not. Master Adan is discussing something with a male elf right at the threshold of the pharmacy. Another dude, whom she recognizes from the tavern, is chopping firewood with an expression of bored despair. And then there's another character she hasn't seen before – a tanned fellow with a fussy haircut, wearing some kind of partially plated, very flashy piece of ornamental armor that looks distinctly unsuited for the weather – though that, in itself, is nothing surprising. He's arguing with a Chantry sister. Neither looks pleased.

She turns on her heels and marches to the back of the house. And then opens one of the back windows, peeks out to see if she has an audience, and, reassured that she does not, exits that way.

She lands and recoils immediately with a muffled curse. To be fair, her opposite number – which she identifies as one of the piglet-like creatures called 'nugs' – hadn't expected such outrageous behavior from one of the bipeds either. It squeals, skids in place for the first few seconds of its initiated flight response, and then takes off down the hill in the direction of the forge.

If Varric could see her now, she is pretty sure he would be howling with laughter.

Right. She hasn't snuck out of a guy's house through the window since age sixteen.

A special kind of bad news indeed.

Margo hesitates, trying to determine which direction will least likely lead to detection. She decides to follow the nug. If someone asks, she can always claim that she's actually going after the creature on purpose to collect its droppings. Master Adan does use nug dropping ash for something or other. Come to think of it, this is an interesting question. She will have to check what its applications are.

By the time she levels with the tavern, she drops the sneaky act. So far, no one has paid her any particular attention. The most reasonable thing to do would be to follow protocol, and report back to Leliana – for whatever unpleasantness Torquemada has concocted for her this time – but the prospect of doing so on an empty stomach puts her in a bleak mood, so she decides to try her luck at the tavern first.

"Hey, Blondie." The moment she steps over the threshold, she is accosted by the Qunari, who is presiding over a table staffed by a retinue of very efficient looking mercs. "Sit with us. Have you met the Charges?"

Introductions follow.

Krem, she decides she likes right away. The others look a lot more closed in on themselves, and on each other – a tight-knit little group that doesn't necessarily admit outsiders.

Bull claps her on the back.

"Heard you all came back last night from the Mire. You missed training this morning. You're usually the first to be up and on the grounds."

There is definitely an implied question in the statement. "Sorry, Bull. Slept in. Tangling with Avvars and dead shits will do that to you."

That seems to satisfy him.

"I hear there were demons."

She wonders what he'd make of Imshael.

"Not for my group. At least we managed to avoid those."

Krem gestures at her in question, and then passes her a plate of food, and some kind of muddy brown concoction that smells of hay and quite possibly earthworms, and that probably is meant to symbolize tea.

She gives him a grateful nod, and digs into the root vegetable and lard mush. Flissa's communal grub is nothing if not spartan, but Margo decides that she's not going to be picky about it. At least, it's free. From what she can tell, the system is simple. Basic necessities are provided by the Inquisition. Everything above that – and this includes both bathing and alcohol – is out-of-pocket expenses. The story is probably quite a bit different for the local nobles – and, she would guess, even more different for the underclasses, such as the elves who are not, explicitly, members of the armed forces.

"What did I miss?" she asks the Qunari between two mouthfuls of tasteless, fibrous, slimy starch.

"Met the Vint yet?"

She shakes her head. "Not that I know of. What does he look like?"

Bull shrugs. "Like your typical Vint. Fussy. Full of himself. And a mage." He spits that out like a curse. "Though I hear some people like that sort of thing."

Margo waits until she's finished chewing the unidentified root vegetable, and takes a sip of her "tea." Gah. This shit is foul.

"I have no doubt that some people do," she offers, with what she hopes is a neutrally pleasant smile. Maybe even a pleasantly polite one! Two can play this game. "There's no accounting for taste."

The Iron Bull chuckles, the sound reminiscent of some kind of large, metal gong.

"Speaking of which. Ever tried a Qunari before?"

Margo chokes on her 'tea.'

"Tried what now?"

There are some sniggers from the group. Krem shakes his head in mild disapproval.

"Stop giving her shit, chief – she's just back from the field. Give her a second to acclimate." He turns to Margo, his expression amused. "Don't worry about it. You're too blond for him anyway. He prefers redheads."

Margo narrows her eyes, and takes a quick glance at the Qunari. What is he trying to achieve here? Sure, his expression is teasing – just your regular bawdy banter of the typical mixed-gender army variety. But the eyes - well, eye, to be exact - is calm, and perceptive. Calculating even. Like what she imagines the eyes of a Stazi officer might have looked like. And in fact, the apparent come-on doesn't really feel like one. More like a chess game. Knight to queen's bishop 3.

Ugh. She sucks at chess.

She buys herself time by refilling her cup of 'tea,' such as it is.

"I'm just curious, Krem. Blondie here has never come across a Qunari before. But she came… across a Vint, from what I hear. So here I am, wondering. How come she's been in touch with the Vints, but not the Qunari?"

More sniggers.

Oh, she's so not in the mood for this. Especially because she has the distinct impression that the Ben Hassrath is actually having two conversation at once. One for the benefit of his companions – that's the one that's cracking lewd jokes about Maile's sexual escapades, and giving the appearance of propositioning her – and one to her, about her background, whatever that might be. And the subtext seems to be saying 'I'm not buying what you're selling, so you better come up with something more convincing.'

And also, what the fuck. She thought they were… well, not friends, exactly. But still, why is he suddenly doing this? She can't shake the feeling that there are two parallel agendas that get folded into each other, as far as Bull is concerned. Except, of course, this is not the first time this has come up. Sera's truth or dare game was the first occasion.

Ok. Alright. He wants double-speak? She can do double-speak. Orwell on too much Buddhism, here we go. Except, she has the distinct impression that her only shot at getting out of this is to confuse expectations – or, at least, to sidestep the question. Or to redirect.

Maybe she can turn this around, and kill two birds with one stone.

She leans back in her chair, one arm thrown casually over the back of it, and gives him an appraising once-over, letting her body language morph into an imitation of a kind of devil-may-care sauciness.

"Why didn't I come across the Qunari. A streak of bad luck, perhaps?" she offers, and gives him a look that she hopes mirrors his own. The one where there seems to be a surface meaning for the general audience, and an underlying, much more targeted, question.

It's subtle. In fact, so subtle that if she weren't looking for it like her life depends on it – which it quite possibly does – she might have missed it. But there's just a tiny fraction of a movement to the Qunari's good eye – a tension, there, and then gone. And then, it's followed by an almost imperceptible nod.

"Well, my door's always open, Blondie. If you ever feel like checking out the other side."

There are more chuckles from the peanut gallery, and a couple of the Charges give her evaluating glances. Not Krem, however. The expression on his face is quite… analytical. This one is on his boss's wavelength.

She finishes her grub, gives the assembled company a mock military salute, and makes for the exit.

"See you on the training grounds this afternoon."

Disregard the sniggers, and the message sounds a lot like 'this conversation's far from over.'

She walks to the forge next, hoping to get a replacement for her lost daggers – they never did surface after her time with the Avvar. Master Harritt hands her a generic set – she's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a weapons expert, but they seem like perfectly adequate tools for slicing something to shreds.

"You want something fancier, I can work with you, but it'll take time, materials, and some money."

She nods. Maybe she really should start thinking about acclimating. For real, this time. To the body. To the weapons. And to her new role, whatever the hell it is. It doesn't seem like she's going back to her world any time soon. Or ever. What did Baba say? The breath soul's gone, anyway, so no need to worry about that. The breath soul being the one that is attached to her body, the enfleshed essence of it. And if that's gone, then…

The thought sucks the breath out of her, and she stands there, looking blankly at the men working the forge. She's not going to see her brother again and hear about his derailed romances. Or listen to him play Bob Dylan on his old, seven-string guitar. She won't get woken up by the damn cat at 4am because that's when it decides to come in for a cuddle. She won't buy an expensive plane ticket to fly back home to tidy up her daughter's grave. Or lie down under the aspen where baba's ashes are scattered, and stare at the clouds. Or talk and laugh with her old grad school friends, sometimes over late night Skype sessions and too much wine because life has scattered them to the winds, and this is how they meet now. She won't sit through a faculty meeting with her colleagues. She won't write that article, or finish that book manuscript. She won't teach a class ever again. She won't go on another movie date with the Bulgarian anarchist from the physics department, and discuss Bertolucci cinematography over late night wine and maybe a cigarette, sheepishly stolen from the people over at the next table. Or, even more sheepishly, move on to Game of Thrones, which is what they really want to talk about anyway. Or reminisce about what it was like to grow up in the ashes of state communism. Or to relocate to the "West" and start over. She won't have coffee at her favorite café, and read a trashy sci-fi novel on a Saturday morning that she's free, for once. There is no coffee. It's not clear whether there are Saturdays.

Well, at least there might be trashy lit, considering Varric's writing…

Margo forces herself to focus. There is no helping this. The world is all that is the case.

And within that world, there is the giant hellmouth in the sky, and Evie, and however the two problems might be connected.

The movement is hesitant at first – one foot, then the other – but at length, Margo finds herself walking.

She knocks at Evie's door, and expects no answer. Surely, the Herald of Andraste is not hiding in her hut mid-morning, avoiding all sorts of unpleasant responsibilities that come with being the Local Deity Head Honcho's Officially Selected One.

As it turns out, it is exactly what Evie's doing.

"Margo! You came! I'm so glad you're here!"

The girl gives Margo a tight hug.

Margo returns the embrace, and then takes a better look at young Lady Trevelyan. She is wearing a bizarre mismatched sort of outfit that involves some leather leggings, a very loose, baggy knit sweater, an impossibly bright blue kaftan, and the sort of slippers with upturned toes that Margo associates with something vaguely and undecidedly 'Oriental.' A strange alternative to the too revealing, unpractical battle armor.

Evie begins to fuss with a tea kettle on a little stove in the corner of the wooden house.

"You'll have tea, right? I have actually nice tea. Not the stuff that Flissa makes."

Margo smiles. "Nice tea sounds really good."

Something that doesn't taste like earthworms? She'll take it.

Evie turns to her with a kind of hopeful, beseeching expression.

She really is very pretty. And, in this light at least, Margo suddenly notices the things that she hasn't paid attention to before. Like the way that Evie's bob cut accentuates her delicate, almost childish features. The big, dark blue eyes – one shade away from violet. The long, dark eyelashes. The slight plumpness of her cheeks, and the perfect, porcelain-doll complexion. The spatter of freckles across her nose. On the surface, everything about Evie is cute. But there are the other things there as well.

Like the worried crease that is morphing into a permanent wrinkle between her brows.

And the ghost of a scar – in the shape of stylized sun – on her forehead.

It's faint. So faint, in fact, that Margo would have never noticed it, but the combination of the fact that Evie's got her bangs brushed back with a hair band, of the slight sheen of perspiration because the cabin is hot as hell, and of the slanted light from the unusually bright Haven morning catches its outline. Like a silver ghost. Or a hologram, visible only at certain angles.

Evie notices her gaze, blushes, and turns around.

"Sorry." A quiet, miserably kind of utterance. "I'm not wearing make-up. It's just that I thought, I'd take the day to myself, and then I got distracted, and then…"

Margo walks over to her, and puts her arm around the girl's shoulder. Elves, by and large, are shorter, but she's actually slightly taller than Evie.

"Don't you fuss over that on my behalf. Also, you know you're gorgeous, right? You need not worry about that for one bit."

Evie rubs her forehead.

"You noticed, though." She says, forlorn. "Bann Trevelyan always says that I need to wear a powder, because it's really faint, but sometimes, in just the right light, you can see it. And I have this really nice powder from Val Royaux, but it is terribly itchy, so I thought…Because I wasn't going to go out until later…"

Margo takes over the tea preparation, because, by this point, there is a slight tremor to Evie's hands.

"Tell me about it?"

She doesn't want to pry. Except, of course, she has to pry.

And she doesn't know why the scar is important – except it feels like it is.

Evie gives her a miserable, heartbroken sort of look.

"I don't know. That's the thing. Bann Trevelyan never explained. It was… It was right around the time my mom went away, but he never talked about my mom. And Aunt Lucile would always say something about letting the dead rest in peace – though I don't know if all dead rest in peace, exactly, because in the Mire, they're certainly very active, and not very peaceful at all." She takes a deep breath. "So, actually, I think Aunt Lucile is kind of an asshat, and full of, you know." A theatrical whisper. "Shit." Stated with grim determination.

Margo nods in approval. "From what I've heard about Aunt Lucile, I'd say that this is an accurate assessment."

Evie gives her a tentative smile. "Right? I mean, she did call me an abomination once."

Margo frowns. That seems rather harsh, by any standard. If someone called her an abomination, she might just mix some strong laxatives into their tea. Why not? A nice colon cleansing might do them good.

She turns to the girl. "Why did she call you that?"

That propels Evie towards new levels of internal misery – clearly reflected on her face – and Margo feels terribly sorry she asked.

"I don't know. It's not like I'm a mage. I can't do magic, or anything like that. I mean, abomination is what happens to mages when they're possessed by a demon. But I don't have magic, so how could I be one? Right?"

Margo nods at her reassuringly.

Yikes. Mages can be overtaken by demons? Ok. Alright, she can work from this. What does this mean? Epistemologically speaking, what are the implications of that process? She forces herself to think. Spirits and demons are kissing cousins, from what she understands. Mages… Mages have some kind of specialized access to the Fade. The Fade harbors spirits. And demons. Who want something. See: Imshael. Solas had mentioned to her that she is not a mage in the conventional sense of the term, meaning that dreaming is not enough to make one a mage. But Solas… there is something important about the elf. Something she almost grasped during their memory return ritual. Something about spirits, and bodies, and…

Oh, hell on a stick. All she can remember is the kiss. And how his lips felt on hers. The first time. And then the subsequent times. And then, tongue. Oh, Heavens, a whole lot of tongue. Very expertly used. And hands. And the way they always feel cool against her skin. And how…

Not helpful. Not helpful one little bit.

Dear Unspecified but Distinctly Malignant Deity, she is out of her depth here. She needs more time. And a research library. And a reliable informant who doesn't kiss her every time she's on the verse of finally understanding something.

"Right" she finally says. "So…" She can do this. Just… don't think about the elf. "How did you come about the scar?"

Evie hesitates, and Margo has a sudden bout of inspiration.

"Because if you're self-conscious about scars, I can show you mine, and I promise you that yours will pale in comparison. No pun intended."

Evie gives her a hopeful look. "Really? Oh…" And now, she's just flustered. "I don't mean it like that. I don't want you to have scars. Scars are bad, right? Bann Trevelyan says that scars mar your natural beauty, and make your prospects of finding a suitable husband less likely."

Margo's pretty sure that her own prospects in that department are slim to none anyway. And also that Bann Trevelyan could use some laxatives in his tea. And be forced to shit outside in the snow somewhere.

She lifts her linen shirt, and shows off her abdominal incision. "Tadaa! I survived a rage demon. How about it."

Evie's eyes widen in surprise. "Oh! That's…"

Margo nods. "A pretty fucking impressive scar, right?"

Evie beams at her. "A rage demon?"

Margo nods again, and gives her a cheeky smile. "I got more, too. See? Pretty forehead scar that's barely there and that looks like it's a design? Pfah!"

Evie sighs. "You think it's pretty? I mean, it doesn't look horrific? I just wish… I don't know."

At this point, the kettle is ready, so Margo pours two cups of tea for them, after finding some mismatched porcelain in one of the cabinets. They settle across from each other on two rustic chairs.

She sips. The tea is, in fact, fantastic. A hearty, sweet oolong, if she were to follow her taste buds.

"Tell me more about it. Not just about the scar. What was it like to grow up in Bann Trevelyan's household?"

Evie sighs, blows on her tea, and takes a sip. "I'm not the best example, really. Not like my siblings. I was sick a lot." There is a faraway look to the girl's expression. "In fact, I was sort of sick all the time. As far back as I can remember."

Margo frowns. Sick? What kind of sick? Could this explain her poor combat skills?

"Is this why you're having trouble with combat? Was your illness in the way of training?"

Evie shrugs. "I guess. Bann Trevelyan said it was important I train, but I'd get… really tired. All the time. Except… Well, I was alright until I was maybe… five? Mom… mom wasn't gone yet. But then mom was gone… and… Anyway, that's what they said."

Oh you poor kid, Margo thinks.

"No one wanted to talk about her. But… She wasn't really gone, you know? She would come by in the evening, when everyone else had gone to bed. And she'd sing to me."

Ah. Wait. Did her mother die? Or did she leave, and sneak back in to see her daughter?

"You mean… when you would dream? She would visit you in dreams?"

Evie shakes her head, and takes another sip of tea. "No. Yes. I mean, yes, sometimes. But I wasn't dreaming. She was right there. And then…"

Margo gives her an encouraging nod.

"It's fuzzy. I got really sick that year. And then Bann Trevelyan invited these people to treat me. Except, I think…" Evie huddles around her cup, as if for warmth, even though the hut is sweltering. "I think it didn't work.

Margo tries to piece together the disjointed narrative. Evie's mom dies – or leaves. Evie herself doesn't seem certain. Except Evie keeps seeing her mother's – what? Ghost? Or her actual mother who is sneaking around? And she is ill – though it could also be psychological effects of losing her mother, whichever way that happened. And Ban Trevelyan decides to summon … who, exactly? A medical commission? Ritual experts?

"Is that when you got the scar?"

Evie nods, not looking up.

"So what happened after?"

Evie stares at her strange slippers.

"I was sick again. Mom would still come. And then the others would too, sometimes, but I didn't tell anyone about the others. And they didn't know about mom, either, because she was really careful. Except that Aunt Lucile found out, because of the dog. A Mabari. They're really smart. I grew up with her, you know? Red. That was her name. And I guess I really missed her. And me and the others, we were just playing anyway. And then she said – Aunt Lucile, not Red – that I couldn't stay home, and that I should go away where they could train me, but Bann Trevelyan said that was out of the question, and that we had to wait. Because Etienne and Moira still hadn't had a baby. They even had gone on the Summer Pilgrimage, to ask Andraste to give them a son. Though honestly, I really don't think Andraste's in the business of giving out babies."

Margo chuckles at that. Still. She can't follow much of this, so she tries to remember the statement verbatim. What on earth is the connection between sending her away and babies? And what 'others'? And what does the dog have to do with any of this?

"Etienne and Moira, these are your…?"

"My older brother and his betrothed. Well, wife now, I guess. Bann Trevelyan had been really against it. When it was clear that they couldn't… you know."

Conceive, Margo guesses. Aha. So Bann Trevelyan wanted Evie around for… what? A spare heir incubator? That part, at least, would make some sort of sense. Bann Trevelyan can really go fuck a tree stump, as far as Margo's concerned.

"Then what happened, sweetheart?"

Evie shrugs again, and hugs her knees to her chest, the cup balanced precariously on top. "It got better. Eventually. Bann Trevelyan said he had found a solution. I was maybe… twelve? No. Thirteen. I remember because I got my… my…"

"Your monthlies?" Margo guesses.

Evie nods, and blushes. "Yes. And Aunt Lucile said I was a woman grown, now. And Bann Trevelyan said it'll all be alright from there. That's when mom stopped coming."

Margo frowns, doing the math. If Evie's mother disappeared around age five, the likelihood of her sneaking around undetected for seven years seems pretty damn slim. So dead seems more likely.

And also, she has the distinct feeling that Evie is skirting around something.

"What about 'the others.' The ones you didn't tell anyone about? Did they still come after that?"

Evie shakes her head. "No. Well, just the one. And that was just the one time, and way later."

Evie's cheeks turn an incandescent sort of pink, and she stares fixedly at her cup.

"But never after that. That was it. It was just the one time. To say goodbye."

Margo frowns. This seems important – this visitor, whoever he – or she - is. And the blush, too, seems important. "Can you tell me who it was? That visited you to say goodbye?"

Evie shakes her head. "I can't. I'm sorry. I…" She looks at Margo, then. "I would tell you, if I could. I actually want to tell someone, and you've been such a good friend to me. And I don't have many of those, in case that wasn't really obvious." Evie chuckles. "But I… just can't. It won't come out. Every time I even try to think about it, it sort of, just, slips away."

Ok. Alright. She will sort through this later. There is the other problem they have to deal with. The luck siphon.

"Evie, hun, can I ask you a really weird question?"

Evie looks at her, eyes wide, and then nods.

"Have you always been… lucky? As in strange, dangerous things would happen to you, but you'd somehow come out alright?"

Evie shrugs. "It wasn't like that when I was a kid. Not that many bad things happened then. Not while mom still visited. She'd tell me these amazing bedtime stories, you know? Anyway, no. And I wasn't always this clumsy, either. Aunt Lucile said I'd age out of it – that it's typical when your body is growing – but I guess I never did."

Margo rubs her temples, trying to sort through the mess of information. So. Sometimes around when Evie hits puberty is also when the luck siphon manifests. Bann Trevelyan claims to have found a solution to whatever it is that he found problematic about his younger daughter. Whatever said solution entails, it seems to interfere with what was happening with Evie before. Random coincidence? Or causation? Primarily, the visitations from her probably dead mother stop. And from the 'others,' whoever the hell they are.

"Evie, can you tell me about the 'others'?"

Evie shrugs. "Just… other kids, you know. They were my friends. Millie, and Lauren, and Graham. There weren't that many kids my age when I was growing up.

Now Margo is completely and utterly confused. What's wrong with Evie playing with other kids her age? Is this a class issue? Were they servants' children?

"Did Bann Trevelyan not want you to play with them because they were socially beneath you?"

Evie shrugs, and then frowns, thinking. "I don't know. I never told him about it, and he never caught us. Millie, I guess, was an elf. Like you. She was the kitchen maid's daughter. And Lauren… Lauren was really sweet, and she really liked books, and would ask me to read to her because she couldn't read, you know? And Graham… Well, Graham had been sick for a really long time. Since he was a baby. In fact, he still had a bit of a cough, even after he got better. I think it was more force of habit."

Ok. So… likely a different social class, which would explain some of Evie's reticence to get caught playing with the other kids. But Margo has the distinct feeling she is missing something crucial. What does the mother have to do with any of it?

Or the dog? Something about that dog is really bugging her.

"But you can't remember the fourth one? The one who visited later?"

Evie blushes furiously again.

"I remember. I just…" She shakes her head. "I can't say it. I'm sorry."

Margo is about to ask another question, when there is a knock on the door. They both jump.

"Herald?" Cassandra. "We need you in the war room."

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by Lord Trevelyan's poor parenting decisions.

Next up: Margo recruits some help

As ever, thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts.


	24. Chapter 24: Ex Libris

_In which Margo continues her investigation, and meets a Tevinter mage._

* * *

Margo watches the two retreating backs. Cassandra's is ramrod straight, Evie is hunched and huddled over herself.

Because her auditory memory has always been much worse than her visual one, Margo decides that the first order of business is to write this all down before she forgets the details. Evie's account does not arrange itself into a neat story – it is fragmentary, redundant in places, with parts that seem to loop back on themselves – as if it had taken the kid a serious cognitive effort to piece even that much together. But perhaps there is another element at work here. She has the distinct impression that Evie has never tried to tell her life story to anyone before.

It's the same with official histories. These sorts of things tend to congeal into coherence through repetition. Until then, it's just fragments. A scattered sort of thing, as baba would say.

First things first, she needs something to write on. And with.

She's never talked to Seggrit, but is preemptively not a fan – from what she heard from Varric, he charges an arm and a leg, and will try to short-change you at every opportunity – but it seems like the simplest option.

She walks over to the little stall.

"Master Seggrit? Do you sell writing implements?"

The blond gives her a snooty look down his long pointy nose.

"What do _you_ need that for? Since when is your kind literate?"

Margo bristles. Right. Let's start with gross overgeneralizations about an entire race of people based on the fact that many of them live in shit conditions, are exploited, and probably don't have access to education. What could possibly go wrong with that model.

"Since before you lot were shitting in the snow and rubbing sticks together to make fire" she offers pleasantly. It sort of just… comes out. "So, do you have them, or not?"

Probably not the wisest strategy, come to think of it. But completely worth it, just to see the merchant's expression of shocked outrage.

"Ten coppers," he says, and slams down a poorly bound journal and what looks like a graphite stick on the counter, right over top of a bunch of swords that look like they were only recently shovels. Forget mages. They need more merchants, too. What does this guy do, resell whatever junk he's found in some random barrel somewhere?

"Not for that quality of product, you don't." If Baba has taught her anything, it's that you never, ever not haggle. Especially with assholes. She pinches the journal. "That parchment isn't even stabilized properly. I'll give you five."

She's got eight coppers in her pocket. At some point, she's going to need to come by more money.

"Nine." The look he's giving her is suspicious. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't that. "Final offer" he adds. But it's sort of uncertain.

"Six, and not a copper more."

"Greedy knife-ears," he mumbles. "Seven."

"Fine."

Commodity exchange completed, Margo turns on her heels, and heads straight for the Temple. She could, of course, go consult someone first, to help her interpret some of her findings. But it feels… wrong. Even Solas. Evie's story is too raw, and her own knowledge too incomplete. She can't sort what's important to share with the others from what's too private – and offered, however inadvertently, in confidence.

What she really needs is a library.

She gives Torquemada's tent a wide breadth, and enters the Chantry. At some point, it would be very useful to learn that fade-into-the-shadows trick that poor Jan used to practice.

If the Haven Chantry had a library, where would it hide? Minaeve's office of "Unpleasant and Likely Unethical Research into Dead Things' Remains" is in here, so that might be a place to start.

Down the hall, she notices a small group of nobles – at least, she assumes they are nobles considering the excess of brocade – all wearing what looks to be the Thedas edition of Viennese carnival masks, chatting with a woman in a frilly bright yellow dress. The discussion seems… animated.

The woman - striking, in a Mediterranean sort of way – suddenly turns in the direction of Margo's footsteps. Her expression is puzzled for a split second, and then she offers her a friendly smile, and waves her over. Strange. Margo approaches, wondering what new trouble she's about to stumble into.

"Agent! You must be Master Adan's Apprentice, yes? May I have a word?" She turns to the nobles. "If you will excuse me for a moment, Messieurs?"

Margo waits her turn.

"I am sorry we did not have a chance to speak earlier! I hear a lot of good things about you from Enchanter Minaeve."

Well. That's a surprise.

"I am Josephine Montilyet, Ambassador to the Inquisition. And your name is…"

"Margo." Margo says. "Lovely to meet you, Ambassador."

Lady Montilyet nods. "That's it! I apologize – it is sometimes difficult to keep track of Leliana's rotating roster of code names for her operatives. I have…" She pauses, and takes a kind of furtive look around. And then lowers her voice. "I have a bit of a delicate request for you."

Trouble. Here it comes. "Of course, how may I be of service?" Margo inquires, with a neutral smile.

Lady Montilyet nods, apparently encouraged by Margo's pleasantly polite affect. No accounting for taste. "As you have no doubt noticed, the Inquisition is short on amenities. We have a number of noble guests, who are unfortunately unaccustomed to the more… rustic conditions of Haven." Margo tries to place the accent. Spanish? With a little bit of French?

The Ambassador's lips purse into something that looks suspiciously like a mischievous smile. "Some of them are experiencing… difficulties. The food, I suppose, is rather heavy, and lacks diversity, and the 'accommodations' for… 'evacuation,' as it were, are basic, and do not offer some of the usual comforts our guests have come to expect."

Margo frowns, trying to weed through the euphemisms. And then she grins. Right. Trying to 'evacuate' in the woods, with wolves howling in the distance is not conducive to healthy bowel movements.

She lowers her voice, to match the Ambassador's. "I'm sure a mild aperient would suffice? I can deliver it to Minaeve to distribute to those who are experiencing trouble."

Lady Ambassador beams at her. "I knew I could count on your understanding! And your discretion."

Margo gives her a formal little bow. It seems like proper protocol. Whipping up some laxatives for the nobles? She can certainly do that. Whatever helps the cause.

"Lady Montilyet, while I have your attention. Is there a library I may be able to use?"

If the Ambassador is surprised by this request, she doesn't show it.

"Oh, certainly! Although I'm afraid it is… somewhat limited. The office I share with Enchanter Minaeve mostly has my own collection, which is heavy on political texts. But there is a make-shift library for public use right through the hall. Though its organization leaves something to be desired, I'm afraid."

She gestures towards a door off the side of the colonnade.

Margo offers her another formal bow – with a thought that a collection of political texts sounds most interesting too - and makes to leave in the direction indicated. Something catches her eye. Through the door to Minaeve's – and presumably the Ambassador's office – she spots a large wooden desk. It sports a vase with Crystal Grace flowers.

Aha! Could it be… But who are they for? Minaeve, or the Ambassador? If she were a betting woman, she would guess the latter. And if so, good on the Bear. She does wonder, though, how the courtship might be received. Social class does seem to matter in Thedas. Perhaps they're both content with Courtly Love?

The library is truly a work of wonder. Not because it is well-stocked – it is not. And certainly not because it has rare, specialized literature – not that she'd necessarily know, but at first glance, and safe for a few exceptions, the books look like cheaply made editions, many not illuminated at all. The bindings are very basic too. After Margo circumambulates the small room a couple of times with an increasingly puzzled frown, she finally comes to a stop, and forces herself to come to grips with the full horror of the situation.

The books are organized by color.

Who did this?

After two more circumambulations, she locates some promising texts. A large alchemical tome, with "Property of Alchemist Taigan. Hands off!" written on the inside cover. Another book called "Ritual Scarification and Bodily Alteration among the Peoples of Thedas" which may or may not be relevant. And then, another one called "The Abomination and the Woman Who Loved Him." Margo leafs through that one first. Lots of 'throbbing' and 'swooning' and 'heaving bosoms,' and some 'gasping in ecstasy.' Right, then. Rated "two out of five scarves fluttered" by the Rowdy Dowager according to the back cover. She wonders what five fluttering scarves might look like. She puts that one back on the shelf. Another time, maybe.

A few more books on magic, including a glossary of Ferelden magical terminology, and she settles into her work.

She transcribes as much of her conversation with Evie as she can remember. Writes a rudimentary timeline of the significant events, marking the pivotal points with an X. One at around age five, and one at puberty. She draws a stylized sun right above the first one. Ritual? Medical procedure? Above the second one, she writes 'Bann Trevelyan's Final Solution.'

She jots down the keywords that she might be able to search in some index. Abomination. Mabari. What else seemed significant? "Others." The names of the three children. She draws a plus sign, and adds "the other one," followed by a question mark.

"Mother."

She sketches a tentative kinship diagram for the figurants of the story.

She's so absorbed into her work that she registers the footsteps only vaguely, and doesn't lift her head. Another library patron. Nothing unusual about that.

"Oh! Someone actually using the library! You Southerners never fail to surprise me."

She looks up. It's the flashy fellow from the courtyard. Before she has time to react, he turns to the shelves, an irritated expression on his face, and taps his chin with a finger in that universal "where could that book be located" look to him.

Margo considers the intruder. If she were to guess, he is in his early thirties. He is sporting a very fancy haircut. He also looks like he escaped from an 18th century portrait of a Spanish aristocrat. Though that's mostly on account of the particular way he's styled his facial hair.

"Now. I don't suppose you've come across anything on forbidden magics in here. Let's see… No… No… A truly impressive collection of books on martyrs, though. Who knew there were so many?"

Margo wants to go back to her work, but the poor chap's expression is morphing from puzzled, to befuddled, to horrified, and she has a pretty good idea of why that might be.

"Wait a moment. These books are organized by…"

"Color." She nods.

He looks at her, and blinks.

"That is… Astounding."

Margo chuckles. He returns to browsing the shelves, with an expression somewhere between entertained and appalled, and Margo dives back into her work.

The Ritual Scarification tome lends nothing particularly productive – lots of potentially fascinating details on Avvar ornamental scarring, but other than that, no suns. Her eyes keep returning to the very tempting Alchemy tome. Maybe she can just take a quick peek, and then get back to her task. She stays her hand, and leafs through the terminology glossary.

A… A… Aha. Abominations are apparently mages whose will has been dominated by a demon – or a spirit – and who are being meat-puppeted by remote from the Fade.

Wait. Is that what _she_ is? Is her own spirit actually _in_ the Fade, puppeteering Maile's body? She's pretty sure she's actually located inside the body, for what it's worth, but… She narrows her eyes. Is this what Cosmic Asshole wants from her? Would this apply to someone who is not a mage?

Focus. Right. Why would Aunt Lucille call Evie an abomination? Was dear Auntie providing a technically accurate definition or was she just being a snarky old bat?

She relinquishes the tome in favor of Master Taigan's Alchemy manual, with firm plans to borrow it indefinitely after checking with Josephine.

"Oh, something on Abominations!" That's the flashy fellow again. Margo startles and looks up, wondering if he's somehow reading over her shoulder. No. She recognizes the book he's fished out.

"Something tells me that one's probably not an accurate account" she offers.

He leafs through, looking just tickled by it all.

"Oh, but it is so precious! Hmm. Perhaps a little heavy-handed in its use of 'turgid,' though? Oh, look, it diversified! We're on to 'throbbing' now." He turns a couple of pages, and reports back. "Now it's back to 'turgid' again, at least half-a-chapter in. Now, that just seems unusually cruel. That much 'turgid' would get uncomfortable after a while."

Margo grins."Who's it by?"

"Apparently, by one Varric Tethras." He gives her a puzzled look. "Varric Tethras, the author of _Hard in Hightown_? The very same Varric Tethras as…" He gestures vaguely towards the door.

At this point, Margo can't resist. She gets up, and walks over to examine the book's cover. "No, look, the ink is different. Here, and here. This looks added later."

The fellow is nodding. "Yes… Yes, you're right! A counterfeit? How very intriguing!" He looks down. "But excuse my manners! I suppose introductions are in order. I am Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of the Tevinter Imperium."

Margo startles. _That's_ the Tevinter mage?

Whatever is in her expression, he notices.

"Not what you expected? I get this a lot. Let me guess. Not sinister enough?"

Margo considers him. "Your countrymen do seem to have a reputation for it," she finally offers. Dorian of House Pavus strikes her as someone with a pretty well-developed sense of humor. That doesn't quite square with her admittedly superficial expectations. Not that _Maile's_ impressions were 'superficial,' as it were, but apparently that sort of activity does not lend sufficient data to make any generalization about national character.

"We do! We are also known for our punctuality. We always perform our blood magic and human sacrifices fastidiously on time."

"No one likes a sacrifice that starts fashionably late?" Margo ventures.

Dorian gives her a dazzling smile. "Exactly! And you are?"

She's so nonplused by the mismatch between her preconceived notions about what a Tevinter mage should be like and reality that she blurts out 'Margo Duvalle' before she can adapt it.

That seems to confuse the mage for a few seconds. "Not a very elven name, is it? From what I recall, it is not customary for Southern elves to have a second name. Or is it a title? Duvalle, you say? Orlesian? And Margo… is that the Rivaini Margo, from Amargara? Or the Orlesian one?"

Margo has a vague recollection that amargare means bitter in Spanish. Is Rivain to Spain what Orlais is to France? "I suppose I have a rather mixed background" she offers evasively.

"By your accent, I would have guessed… Nevarran."

Interesting. Does she sound a little bit like Seeker Pentaghast? She supposes she can see some similarities.

Introductions concluded, Dorian returns the "Abomination" back to the shelf, and walks over to Margo's working desk.

"Ah. You're the alchemist?"

Margo nods. "An apprentice, technically. You're the mage the Herald met in Redcliffe?"

Dorian gives her a quizzical look. "A well informed apprentice alchemist! But yes." He pauses, seemingly considering his next move. And then he notices her notes. Her chicken scratches are probably not legible to anyone but her – they're hardly legible to _her_ most days – but his gaze lands on her drawing of the little sun.

"Now, this," he says "is an interesting practice. 'The Rite of Tranquility.'" Announced with ominous gravitas. "This is one of those things that the Emperium shares with you Southerners, though of course the Magisters use it with great discernment. Like, say, to silence political rivals."

The Rite of Tranquility? Margo thinks furiously. Tranquility…tranquility… Why does this ring a bell? Ah! Of course! One of her first conversations with Solas, right after the debacle with the wolves. Something about damaging a spirit? No, that's not quite it…

While she's thinking, Dorian leafs through Master Taigan's alchemy tome. "Now, what I am really curious about, is how much information on lyrium falls under the censorship of your Southern Chantry. Does this thing have an index?"

Margo frowns. What is the connection between lyrium and tranquility? Is tranquility a kind of alchemical procedure?

She takes the tome from the mage, and finds the "minerals" section – she has a fairly good sense of how these sorts of books are organized by now, and in her experience, indexes in the local alchemical compendia tend to be unreliable. Auntie's Compendium being the exception that confirms the rule.

"Here, let's see." Lyrium has its own dedicated chapters. She thumbs through quickly. And then, under the section titled "other applications," her hand freezes.

"Holy shit," Margo whispers. Under the inscription _Rites of Tranquility_ , she spots the telltale design of the little stylized sun. There is not much by way of an explanation. " _Among its other uses, lyrium is deployed during_ _the Rite of Tranquility_."

"Holy, no. Shit… Sometimes. No one wants to talk about that, of course. Violently severing mages from their connection to the Fade? What? I thought it would be simple! Snip, snip, all done!" Dorian sighs. "Accidents happen." And then he gives her another one of his quizzical looks. "Now, why would an apprentice alchemist be looking into a rite of tranquility? Is the Inquisition thinking of branching out?"

"I don't think I've ever met a Tranquil," Margo redirects. "What are they like?"

That gives the Tevinter pause. "They become… emotionless. No, that isn't quite right. They are passionless. They have no desires other than to continue an undisturbed existence. Tevinter tends to use them in a research capacity. And why not? They never get bored." He pauses. "Now, that's quite the proposition."

Margo feels the ground shift from under her.

But Evie isn't emotionless. If anything she's _overly_ emotional.

"Can it be reversed?" she asks her new helpful informant. At least this one doesn't try to kiss her each time she's scratching at the door of some kind of insight. She'd find that delightfully ironic, all things considered, except she's too busy contemplating the profound horror of what had potentially been done to the kid.

"Not that I am aware of." A pause. "You do seem awfully interested in this question. May I ask why?"

Margo looks at the 'Vint.' She _could_ just outright lie. She has absolutely no reason to trust this guy – she doesn't know him from Adam. But… He actually seems to speak his mind, and this endears him to Margo quite a bit. People who don't talk in cryptic half-truths. Why aren't there more of them?

"Why are you here, Dorian?" she asks instead. "Really. What brought you all the way to Redcliffe, and from Redcliffe to Haven?"

He gives her a speculative look, and Margo has the distinct impression that's he's deliberating at a fork in the road. "Why my own two feet, of course! And an unwashed sort of fellow with a horse and a buggy."

Margo narrows her eyes at him.

"Oh, very well. If you insist. Just don't give me that squint again, it's terrifying. It was my mentor. Gereon Alexius. Brilliant mage, path breaking researcher, best mentor someone like me could have wished for, and much better than I deserved."

Margo has the distinct feeling that there is another shoe suspended somewhere, and that it is about to drop.

"Until, that is, he decided to experiment with dangerous, highly unstable magic and, as I suspect, used it to annex the Redcliffe mages right from under the nose of your illustrious organization."

Margo frowns. Does this mean that the mages Evie was meant to negotiate with are now off the chess board? She isn't sure whether that's a good, or a bad thing, all things considered.

Then she returns to the problem at hand. Someone else is good at redirecting, as it appears.

"But that still doesn't explain why you're _here,_ " she states. She looks at the mage more closely. There is a worried crease between his brows, and a kind of nervous, impatient tension to his movements that seems borne out of some profound, deep-seated contradiction. But it isn't an unfamiliar one. And if she were to guess, she'd identify it as the ambivalent, uncertain concern for one's intellectual mentor. Perhaps this Gereon Alexius was to Dorian what her PhD advisor was to her. The father she never had. The person who molded her intellectual trajectory, that shaped her thoughts over years of careful, considerate cultivation. And who, in the end, made her at least partially the woman she is. She can certainly see how the feeling that accompanies such a relationship would inspire someone to take action.

"I am here because I want to help. Is that so hard to imagine?"

Apparently being a Tevinter in Feredlen puts one on the defensive. She doesn't bite. In the absence of an argument from her, a fraction of the tension seems to drain out of the mage.

"I'm afraid Alexius has lost his way. I had hoped the Inquisition would help me stop him from doing more damage – to others, and to himself. Surely your organization can see the value in such an alliance."

Margo nods.

"I can. But it's not up to me. I'm just a… lackey."

He gives her a skeptical look.

"Dangerous work, that. But somehow I doubt that's entirely the truth. In any case, I should return to Redcliffe soon. Not all of your magically inclined countrymen are pleased with Alexius's arrangement with the Grand Enchanter, by the way. Something to consider."

With that, he gives her a slightly theatrical bow, and makes for the exit.

"It was nice to meet you, Dorian," Margo offers in return.

"Of course it was! I am witty and charming. A pleasant change, I'm sure."

Margo chuckles. Well, what do you know. She actually _does_ like the Vint.

* * *

This chapter is brought to you by purple prose.

Next up: More investigations, recruitments, and a time for big decisions.


	25. Chapter 25: Gordian Knots

_In which Margo sets things in motion._

* * *

One tome on dog domestication later, and Margo decides that the Mabari, while a fascinating species, gets her absolutely nowhere in terms of understanding Evie's story. She still has no idea at all why the damn dog was important, except for the nagging feeling that she's somehow missing something crucial.

She gathers the alchemy manual she wants to appropriate, and heads out of the room, with the firm intention to ask Lady Montilyet's permission first. Rogue or not, you don't steal books from a library. The Ambassador is not in her office, but Minaeve is, so she asks her instead.

"Not that anyone else seems to read it" is the Enchanter's terse reply. "I'd check with Adan if he wants it, but otherwise, it's yours."

She heads out of the Chantry, her thoughts heavy with apprehension.

There is really no clean ethical solution to this. Can you betray one person's confidence for the benefit of other beings? The entire idea behind finding more about Evie's past pivots around the pragmatics of the luck siphoning vortex. And this, in turn, hinges on keeping as many of her friends – and Inquisition assets – safe.

She's absorbed into the unsolvable ethical Gordian knot, which might account for why she fails to execute her previously successful evasive maneuver, and stumbles right upon Torquemada's tent. In addition to Torquemada in the flesh, the tent also contains Evie – who has apparently extricated herself from whatever planning the Seeker had recruited her for - and another fellow she's seen, but hasn't talked to, whom she identifies, by the heinous lettuce-green hood, as one of the Spymaster's other pawns.

She catches them in the middle of a conversation.

"There are so many questions surrounding Farrier's death. Did Butler think we wouldn't notice?"

Margo inches her way towards the entrance of the tent, hoping to overhear more. Apparently, someone had the audacity to fuck with Torquemada, and it seems like wise strategy to get a sense of what the consequences of that action might be. Nothing good, no doubt.

"He's killed Farrier, one of my best agents" the redhead spits out. "And knows where the others are." She shakes her head. "You know what must be done. Make it clean."

Margo looks at Evie. It's pretty obvious what Torquemada has just ordered. And whoever Butler is – and however much he has screwed up – this, to Margo, feels like a pivotal moment. It isn't even about Butler, strictly speaking. It's about Leliana herself. If there is a seedling of humanity left inside Comrade Nightingale's Kevlar-plated outer shell, it certainly could use some sunlight and warmth right about now, before it dies a quiet, forgotten kind of death. Someone has got to stop her from snowballing down the slippery slope of justified, but casual brutality.

Evie says nothing, and just stares at her feet. And for the first time, the feelings of protective warmth and concern that the kid normally elicits are substituted with a profound, irritated disappointment. Margo stamps out the emotion, conjuring the image of the sun scar – a silver ghost on the girl's forehead, glimpsed by accident, and now carefully concealed behind a layer of make-up and bangs. The kid didn't choose this.

The annoyance vanishes under a whole pile of shame.

Still. Maybe Evie just needs someone to amplify her a bit, to allow her the space to speak. She quickly scans the girl's body language. There's a deep discomfort to the way she is holding her shoulders, and the crease between her brows is especially pronounced. Like that student in class who clearly wants to speak up, but hasn't found her voice yet.

"Spymaster?" Shit. This is probably going to backfire in some spectacular way, but she won't be able to sleep at night if she doesn't at least try. Her sleeping habits are already shit – considering she has to resort to assisted sleeping via elven apostate, more guilt over opportunities lost won't improve the situation.

"Agent. You have something to contribute?"

Evie turns around, and gives Margo a scared – but hopeful – look.

"Is murdering Butler in some dark alley truly the wisest course of action?"

Oh dear Heavens, she's going to regret opening her mouth, isn't she? Comrade Nightingale's expression has adopted its usual corvid – and vaguely carnivorous – cast.

"And what would you have me do, Agent? Let Butler betray more of my people? Your people? Is that what your ethics dictates?"

Before Margo can respond, they are both startled by the sound of a quiet voice. It's timid and awfully embarrassed at taking up attention. But there's something there. A kind of… underlying depth, perhaps. Whatever Evie might be, Margo doesn't think she's passionless.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. But I think Margo's right. Sister Nightingale, you shouldn't kill Butler. Not like that."

Leliana turns to the source of the utterance, who is standing there in the snow, fiddling with the hem of her armor.

"Herald?" The look of surprise sits awkwardly on Leliana's features. And then it reverts back to her usual terrifyingly affable mask, all sharp steel and dark things. "Now is truly not the time for maudlin ideals."

Margo notes Evie's hands balling up into fists over the hem of her armor.

"I didn't realize ideals kept to a strict schedule." The voice is so quiet it's barely audible. "Are they off-duty? Because if so, then maybe I can come back when they're back at their post."

Margo's eyes widen. Is this an earnest question? Or is the kid actually taking the piss? She can't tell with any certainty: it looks sincere, if you ignore the white knuckles over the hem. Margo is not the only one who is nonplused. The Spymaster gives Evie a quizzical look –momentarily startled out of some habitual state of numb implacability – and then frowns.

And for a second, Margo even thinks that Torquemada might be swayed.

She's wrong.

"Lady Trevelyan. Herald. I'm sure it hasn't escaped you that the Inquisition has achieved remarkably little during the admittedly brief history of its reforming. The mages and Templars situation has not been resolved. Refugees still suffer. Innocents suffer. We have barely enough influence to secure basic necessities – let alone convince anyone to ally with us or offer support. And this at a time when an alliance is desperately needed."

Leliana crosses her arms.

"Each day we fail to secure supporters is another day the Breach remains. So no. This is not a time for ideals. It is a time for difficult decisions. And if Andraste's Chosen is unwilling to make them, then someone must do so in her stead." All delivered with a layer of steel thick as an arm, but underneath it, Margo intuits another shape. Some kind of ancient and unresolvable ache, like the phantom pains of an old heartbreak.

Margo watches Evie deflate, as if all the air is sucked out of her, along with the courage it took to confront the Spymaster. Frantically, she tries to think of an argument that would allow Evie to find her footing again, or at least to disrupt Leliana's course on vengeful efficiency. And one that would not simply be dismissed on account of who the argument is coming from.

"Spymaster, surely there are politically preferable alternatives to back alley murders" she finally blurts out.

Leliana, to her surprise, doesn't try to incinerate her with her gaze, which has been her habitual modus operandi. Instead, she shakes her head, that old sadness still lingering at the corners of her eyes.

"I wish there were, Agent." She considers Margo with something that almost could pass for a human expression. "You are working hard to correct your mistakes, are you not? Perhaps I was much like you once – both eager to do what it took, and intent on keeping my ideals. Sadly, this achieved little. The Maker doesn't care about our ethical equivocations. If he did, surely the Divine would still be alive. And Andraste, his favorite, the one he held above all others, would have led a long and beautiful life."

At the mention of the Maker, Evie suddenly straightens.

"Spymaster Leliana…" Evie's hands are now balled into tight fists at her sides. "I really don't know much. And I know you all think me naïve and inept. But even I know you shouldn't expect a pat on the head from the Maker every time you don't act like a complete asshat."

Leliana's expression turns shocked, as if Evie had slapped her. And then her eyes narrow, and Margo realizes with a sinking feeling that this was not the right thing to say. Maybe at a different time in the Spymaster's life, this argument would have gotten through her shields. But not anymore.

"Do not presume to school me in matters of faith, child. The Maker has taken everything from me, and still, that does not seem to satisfy. When you lose everyone and everything you love to the vagaries of His divine will, then we can have this conversation again. But, for now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do."

And with that, they are dismissed.

They walk out together.

"That was brave of you. And the right thing to do" Margo states firmly. Even if it didn't get the desired result, it took chutzpah to stand up to Torquemada. Certainly more than she'd managed to conjure up in her own conversations.

Evie is pale, a slight tremor still visible in her hands.

"I think the Spymaster can't hear the Maker anymore" she notes quietly.

Margo cuts the girl a quick glance.

"Can you hear the Maker, Evie?"

The girl shrugs.

"No. But I think I understand why Sister Leliana is so sad." She pauses. "I wish He'd still talk to me too."

Evie excuses herself, and walks back towards her hut, and Margo is left standing in the street. The weather is turning for the stormy once again, heavy grey clouds laden with unshed snow, and so low they feel like a lid over the mountain landscape. Even the Breach is nothing but a faint greenish backlight for the cloud cover.

She walks over to the training grounds, intent on keeping her sparring date with the Bull. She has the distinct suspicion that any avoidance tactic will result in more double-edged questioning. How much of an interrogation can he really mount while they're whacking at each other, right?

The Qunari is by his tent, and when he spots her, he gives her a brief nod. She walks over.

"Thought you wouldn't show" he offers, something a little lazy, and a little speculative in his tone – and whatever it is, Margo decides she doesn't like it one bit.

"And miss the pleasure of having your smack me upside the head some more? Not a chance."

That's met with a rumbling chuckle, but his good eye remains serious.

"So. You want to spar? Or you have other things in mind?"

She narrows her eyes. Again with the come-on that isn't one. What is he playing at? They don't have much of an audience – she can spot Krem talking to Master Harritt, and none of the Charges are otherwise in sight.

She hates the games. She really does. It already feels like she's trying to juggle too many balls – and maybe a couple of chainsaws to boot – and when it comes to juggling large, sharp, lethal objects, probability is not on your side.

"What's this about, Bull? Do you have a problem with me?"

He shrugs.

"Depends. I've made some inquiries about you. Nothing personal, you understand – that's just how we roll. Ben Hassrath network's good for that sort of thing. Guess you could say I'm curious about your story. And I thought a private conversation might suit your better than a public one."

Margo cocks her head.

"Sure, I'm happy to talk. But what's with the propositioning?"

The Iron Bull gives her another one-shouldered shrug.

"Figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. If you're who your story suggests, you'd probably try to use sex to distract me. Not that it'd work – but I don't mind you giving it your best shot." Another somewhat humorless chuckle. "But if you're not – which is what I'm leaning towards – then I figured I'd offer you a cover for why you and I are talking. Don't think your Spymaster's ruled out the possibility that you're viddathari. The Inquisition's a system that wants to be centralized, but can't. So the redhead's not crazy about relevant information passing her by. If she assumes you're just scratching an itch, she might think it's all it is." He pauses. "She won't. But she could."

Margo narrows her eyes. She's not sure what a viddathari is, exactly, but she does remember that Torquemada's original suspicion was that she was a Qunari spy.

"You know, Bull, I already have a hell of a reputation. I'd rather not make it worse."

Another noncommittal shrug.

"Up to you. You and I are going to have a chat, though. And then we'll talk about that luck thing."

How many times has he fought alongside Evie? She wasn't under the impression that the kid leaned heavily on the Iron Bull in terms of who she chose to deploy. But if Cassandra had been with them for the time they had traveled to the Mire, then that would have left Evie with either Blackwall or Iron Bull, or both, for the heavy front-liners. And the Ben Hassrath strikes Margo as terrifyingly, eerily observant. She is fairly certain it wouldn't have taken him long to see that there was a pattern.

"We'll talk" Margo finally confirms. "Can we train for now?"

He gives her an inscrutable look.

"Lead the way."

They do train for about forty minutes, and the Qunari keeps her on her toes. Not the least because he's pulling his punches a lot less than usual. Eventually, the no holds barred nature of the combat forces Margo into a kind of meditative mindlessness, and from there, she just lets her body do its thing. Which it does, and she even manages to plant the Qunari in the snow a couple of times, using his own mass and momentum against him.

She steps away from the training grounds sweaty, exhausted, and with what is probably a truly stunning collection of bruises – none of them on visible skin.

Strangely enough, the Iron Bull seems a lot less hostile after their session – in fact, he's downright affable.

"Better, Blondie. I guess some of us improve under pressure."

And with that, he turns around, and heads back towards his tent.

"You let me know when you're ready to have that chat."

Margo frowns. She tries to make sense of his actions, but the whole experience just confounds her further. The entire thing feels like a test – or, more accurately, like some kind of Socratic method of teaching taken to the N-th degree, where not only do you not know the hypothetical answers, but aren't even sure what the questions signify. Or whether there is a question.

She heads for the baths, and catches the end of the women's shift, so makes quick work of washing herself and her clothes. They're still a little damp when she leaves, which, in the frigid weather, does not make for the most pleasant experience, but at least she's no longer stinky.

The Apothecary is next, and by this point, Margo is perfectly well aware that she is in a holding pattern, procrastinating what really needs to be done, but she decides to buy herself one more hour with making the laxatives, as per the Ambassador's request. Adan is there as well, working on something called "essence of lightning." He looks up when she enters.

"Ha. Look what the deepstalker dragged in."

She asks whether he wants help, but he just shakes his head, and waves her off.

"You need to pass your Adept examination to work with this stuff. If we're all still alive in a month, we can tackle that."

Margo hopes that whatever the Adept exam involves, it's not a draught that adds another cosmic asshole to her collection. She'd rather drink outright poison.

She processes the herbs – Auntie's Compendium gives a simple enough recipe for a mild laxative that involves spindleweed, a kind of slimy, algae-like plant that puts her in mind of the Rhipsalis genus. Peel the stems, crush them into a sticky paste, add elfroot, and roll into pills with molasses or honey. Task completed, she sets the pills to solidify on a baking tray, and wonders whether she might be able to streamline some of the heavily used tonics into pill form. It would save quite a bit of space for when the troops are in the field – the elfroot healing potion might not work, she decides, since a decoction does absorb better, and quicker, but for the restorative draught, she should experiment. Pop a pill before battle, and off you go.

Adan takes a break from his activities to hand her a little purse full of coppers.

"It's not much" he adds apologetically. "But I'm not about to start withholding your pay just because the Inquisition can't get its budget together."

She tucks the purse into her coat.

Margo notices the waning light outside – part snow storm, and part simply the fact that the day, somehow, has managed to escape through her fingers. At this point, more procrastination is simply untenable. The longer she puts off what needs to be done, the larger the task will grow, until it feels impossible to tackle.

She tells Adan she would be back later, and exits the pharmacy. But at least, all that time sitting on her hands has borne fruit, and she can now sense the contours of her decision. She cannot solve the Evie problem alone, that much is evident, but she has the strong feeling that this is not something that should be shared widely. Not without more evidence. And so, she would start with those with whom it all began.

She tracks down Varric first, in part because she decides to outsource the task of recruiting the Seeker to him. It isn't that she's necessarily intimidated by the Warrior Princess, but they are not on close terms, and she'd rather have Varric do the persuading. The dwarf is, of course, in the tavern, though she's surprised to find him alone at a back table, scribbling something down in a journal. Probably working on his next book, she decides.

She orders two half-pints from Flissa, and sits next to him.

"Oh-ho, Prickly! You've finally decided to pay up?"

They clink their slightly foggy glasses together. The tavern is hot and humid, the rough floor planks covered in murky puddles of melting snow. It's still too early for the evening meal, so the crowds of soldiers haven't yet filed in.

"Varric, I think I need to call a meeting. I was hoping you'd help."

There is almost no change to the dwarf's expression - except for a mild tightening to his jaw, and a slight squint to his coppery eyes - as he considers her carefully over his ale.

"If this is what I think it is, you want to keep it small?"

She nods. "Would you ask Cassandra? I'll get Solas. Let's start from there."

Varric inclines his head, and then gives her a little smirk. "And how much time should I give you and Chuckles before I go and fetch the Seeker?

Margo offers him her evil squint. If it works on the Vint… "Maybe I should ask you the same thing, hmm?"

That draws a surprised – and somewhat vexed - little "hmpf" from the dwarf. "You know, Prickly, it is possible for two people to just dislike each other, without it being code for something else."

At this point, it is Margo's turn to smirk. What's good for the goose… "For what it's worth, you two would make a formidable pair."

Varric crosses his arms over the impressive display of chest hair. "I like my romantic liaisons without a side of interrogation and possible torture, thank you very much." He takes a sip of beer, clearly satisfied with his rhetorical countermove.

"Just agree over a 'safe word' first. I bet your editor would say this has 'narrative potential'."

Varric almost chokes on his beer. "You're trouble, Prickly."

And then Margo notices a faint dusting of color across the dwarf's cheekbones, and starts chortling in honest. Turnabout is fair play.

"I'm not having this discussion," Varric finally offers. "We have bigger problems."

That, at least, she can't argue with. They finish their beers and agree to reconvene right after the evening chant.

"Where do you want to meet? Should be somewhere away from prying eyes. And ears. Preferably on neutral grounds" Varric comments, now all business.

Margo thinks for a few seconds. "Let's meet in Master Taigan's old hut. Do you know where it is? The only person who ever uses it is Adan. And I think he prefers to avoid it if he can. I suppose he still misses his mentor."

Varric nods his agreement. Margo gets up to leave. "It's bad, isn't it?" Varric calls after her, and she casts him a quick look over her shoulder. There's another one with a fatalistic streak, judging by his expression.

"It's… strange," she finally offers.

* * *

 _This chapter is brought to you by Margo and Evie failing their charisma roll. Because it doesn't make sense to me, depending on how one configures Leliana's background and present situation, that she could easily be 'softened.'_

 _Next up: Secret gatherings_


	26. Chapter 26: Marked

_In which Margo recruits co-conspirators._

* * *

She tries Solas's hut in their shared courtyard first – with little hope that the universe would provide such a facile answer. She is correct, of course, and the door remains closed and bolted, the windows dark against the remnants of the fading afternoon light.

Margo turns her back to the house, and pulls her jacket hood over her hair. The snowstorm is gathering quietly, but she can smell the shift in the air, like the breath of some ancient glacier - damp, bone-chilled, and mineral under the scent of snow. The little village is bracing itself in anticipation, shutters on windows being pulled tight from the inside, and plumes of smoke rising over the rooftops. As she walks down the hill, she spots quite a few of the locals swinging axes to chop firewood.

She's not sure where to look for the elf, so she spirals out in widening circles, vaguely hoping that he isn't simply asleep somewhere completely unreasonable, exploring whatever historical remainders – or reminders - the Fade might have absorbed and digested. And if he is, indeed, asleep in some random hole, Margo finds herself hoping that it at least provides shelter from the storm.

She finds them by the trebuchets. An unlikely pair: Solas, hands clasped behind his back, his face titled upward, surveying the massive structure, and Blackwall, crouching by some kind of mechanism at the base of the monstrous war machine, and prodding at a wooden gear. Margo hesitates for a second, then walks over to them.

"Margo." The Bear clears his throat, perhaps a tad unsure whether to address her by name or title. "Agent," he adds, just in case.

"Blackwall. Solas. Terrifying siege weapon." She inclines her head briefly at each figurant.

Blackwall's eyes crinkle at the corners with an invisible smile, and then he pats the contraption like one might a reliable, but aging draft horse. "Not a bad one, either. If Cullen could get his lazy oafs to oil the gears properly. And check that the ropes aren't fraying. This climate does a number on the fibers."

She glances at the elf for a brief moment, long enough to catch the barest glimmer of a smile, and a fraction of a bow.

"Are you well rested, Lethallan?" he asks quietly.

It is Margo's turn to return the slight bow. "Very much so." Their gazes snag once again, that jolt of vertigo in the pit of her stomach, before she forcibly refocuses on the rock-hurling contraption. "Thank you," she adds, almost too low to hear.

Blackwall doesn't seem to pay much attention to whatever subtext underlies their exchange – he is still absorbed by the trebuchet, except that now his forehead creases with worry as he looks out over the palisade towards the darkening flank of the next mountain range. "On their own, they're perfectly good machines. That doesn't change the fact that there isn't enough of them."

"Warden Blackwall was just explaining to me that Haven, as it stands, is indefensible," Solas offers conversationally.

Margo looks between the two men. "Are we important enough for that to be an issue?" Because, of course, you only need defenses if someone in fact cares enough to attack you.

Blackwall seems to ponder the statement. "The Inquisition isn't just an army, Margo. It's a symbol. Wars have been waged over less."

Margo, of course, understands his point perfectly well. Still. Some symbols have more potency than others, and so far, she is not convinced that the Inquisition has captured the imagination of many. Not enough, at least, to warrant the resources expanded on a full scale attack.

"Anyway." The Warden straightens, and turns towards her. "I have a hankering for a drink. You two care to join me? As I recall, I promised you a round back in the Mire, demons take that Maker forsaken hole." He turns to the elf. "And you owe me a rematch. No idea how you beat me the other night, but I wouldn't mind winning my dignity back."

At her puzzled look, Blackwall shakes his head in disgust. "Taught Solas diamondback before we left for the bog. He turned around and beat me at it. Lost everything. Had to walk back to my quarters with only a bucket for my bits."

Margo glances at the elf, who stands entirely unrepentant - and not a little smug. She stifles a fit of rather undignified giggles.

"I am happy to part with your belongings, Warden Blackwall. I have little use for a full set of heavy armor." Solas seems to be suppressing a grin, which, with nowhere else to go, percolates to his eyes. "But I would gladly take you up on your offer of a rematch at a later date. Provided you have anything left to wager."

Margo chortles quietly, but then the amusement is replaced by a pang of wistfulness. She wishes there were more of these moments – glimpses of laughter and levity stolen from the grinding weight of catastrophe.

At the sound of the bell, they turn their heads synchronically towards the temple. The first notes of the evening chant carry faintly over Haven, strands of melody intertwining with the whistling wind.

"Solas, may I have a moment of your time?" She pauses, trying to phrase the statement in a way that won't peek the Bear's interest. "I need a mage's advice regarding an alchemical procedure."

Solas catches her gaze, his own grey eyes intense with an unuttered question, and then he inclines his head. "Of course, lethallan."

The three of them walk together towards the center of the village. Before bidding them farewell, Blackwall hesitates, shifting on his feet with obvious discomfort. "Eh, Margo. I've meant to thank you. For the … ahem… the consultation on the flowers the other day."

Margo frowns briefly, and then recalls the vase of Crystal Grace flowers on the Ambassador's desk. "Did it work as intended?" she asks.

Blackwall clears his throat, and kicks the snow with the tip of an armored boot. "We'll see, I suppose."

She nods. "Sometimes it takes more than one application." She's sorely tempted to wink at him, but resists the compulsion, not wanting to embarrass the poor man more than he already is. "Keep at it."

"I… Ahm. I'll keep that in mind."

He pivots and walks off towards the tavern.

Margo catches Solas's quizzical gaze on her.

"All is well with Warden Blackwall?" he asks, tone carefully neutral.

It's not Margo's secret to tell, of course, but there is that slight hitch to the elf's voice, a practically imperceptible shift in timbre, and by now, she has learned to identify it. She doesn't think that there are any proprietary claims made between them – a couple of kisses does not need to signify much – but she knowns vulnerability, however slight, when she hears it and is not one to exploit it just for the power kick.

She brushes her knuckles against the back of his hand, a brief gesture of assurance.

"He is a good man. I hope his chosen pursuits do not lead him to too much heart ache."

Solas peers at her, and then nods his understanding. "An applicable wish for more than just our Warden, I fear," he offers quietly.

His cool fingers twine around hers briefly, and then he lets go, and clasps his hands behind his back once again. The warm and fuzzies rear their head, somewhat interrogatively, and she lets them know in no uncertain terms that now is not the time. She stuffs her hands into her pockets, for lack of a better use for them.

"Solas, I've called a meeting with Varric and Cassandra. Varric should be off recruiting the Seeker, and I was in charge of fetching you."

His expression turns from melancholy to sharp and attentive. "You have discovered something, da'nas?"

She nods. "And the nature of your discovery has prompted you to gather a small circle of co-conspirators."

It isn't a question, but she nods again. "We meet at Master Taigan's hut after the evening chant. I think we should walk separately, however."

It is the elf's turn to nod. "Agreed. Though please resist the urge to get eaten by wolves along the way."

In Margo's estimation, the evening prayer runs for about half an hour, so she takes her leave of the elf, and heads back towards the Apothecary, intent on gathering her notes and her books. She stuffs the journal in her knapsack – along, for some reason, with the tome on dogs, and her new alchemy manual. Master Adan is gone, having left a sordid mess in his wake. She checks on the pills. They have solidified nicely, so she collects them into one of the small woven satchels Adan keeps in a crate under the work station, and labels them "For Lady Ambassador." She considers what else to write – something euphemistic would probably be more suitable – and so she adds "To ease the process."

She leaves them in the courier box by the door.

Tasks completed, Margo heads out and makes her way towards the old alchemist's hut, hood pulled low against the rising snow flurries.

She meets no wolves this time.

By the time she gets to the cabin, she notices a faint, flickering light in the window. A thin plume of grey smoke rises above the chimney, its contours just one shade lighter than the graphite gray of the sky.

She pushes the door open, taps the snow off her boots, and enters, hoping that she's not about to stumble on Master Adan.

As is turns out, she is the last one to arrive. Varric and Cassandra are sitting at a small table, and by the look of them, have been bickering the whole time. Solas is leaning against a bookshelf, leafing through a tome on Chasind plant lore.

"Prickly! Fashionably late, heh?"

"My apologies," Margo pulls her hood down, and retrieves a crate from the corner to sit on. Solas returns the book back to its shelf and glides to stand against the wall, between herself and Varric.

"I am not sure how I feel about secret meetings in abandoned houses, Agent, but Varric was... very insistent." There is an edge to Cassandra's voice, some intractable emotion between exasperation and a kind of deep seated reluctance.

Margo opens her knapsack, and extracts her journal, as well as the alchemy manual. She is fairly certain she will have a friendly – or, at the very least, an open-minded - audience with both Solas and Varric. The Seeker, on the other hand, may prove more of a challenge. She will have to cater her message to her, then.

Before she can proceed, Varric interjects. "You can skip the prologue, Prickly. I've already debriefed the Seeker about our theory on the luck bending mechanism. I figured it'd come across better from someone who can actually spin a story."

Margo meets the warrior woman's gaze. "Does Varric's explanation accord with your own experience, Seeker Pentaghast?"

Cassandra pauses before answering, and then, reluctantly, nods. "Impossible as it seems, yes. There is moderate comfort in knowing that I have not been imagining it."

"So what'd you find, Prickly. Don't keep us in the dark."

Margo takes a deep breath. "I should preface this by saying I don't know what this means. Or how to put it all together." She flips through the alchemy tome, until she comes up on the Lyrium section, and then finds the page with the Rite of Tranquility under 'Other Applications'. She lets the book fall open, and flips it towards her companions. She taps the image with her index finger.

"Evie has a similar mark on her forehead."

Varric's eyes widen to the size of copper coins. Solas inhales shaply. Cassandra outright gasps.

"It cannot be," the Seeker finally says, shaking her head. She looks to Varric for support, and not finding it on the dwarf's suddenly grim features, turns to the elf. "I have met many Tranquils. I am certain the Herald isn't one."

"Alright. Let's all keep our heads and not jump to hasty conclusions." That's Varric, with the habitual conciliatory gesture. "Start from the beginning, Prickly."

And so, she does. With references to her scribbled notes and the timeline she had managed to compose, Margo retells what she was able to piece together of Evie's story. It takes more time than she thought it would, in part because she keeps interjecting her own uncertainties about each event, and their possible interpretations. But her companions remain silent and attentive. Cassandra's expression is disturbed, and, by the end of Margo's report, appalled. Varric's is carefully neutral, but it's a cultivated kind of neutrality, a thin mask over something much grimmer. And Solas… She glances briefly at the elf. His eyebrows are knit together, his eyes stormy, dark, and focused on something beyond their immediate surroundings, as if he is peering into fate's hidden mechanism and realizing the clockwork has a terminal flaw. If Varric's fatalism runs deep beneath the surface, Margo notes, not for the first time, that Solas's does not.

"Solas, tell me this is impossible." That's Cassandra again, temper rising in her voice. "You have spent days caring for the Herald. Surely you would have noticed the brand. It is not a subtle thing. Or have you concealed this from us?"

Solas's gaze focuses on the warrior woman, his expression troubled. "No, Cassandra, I had not noticed such a brand. Although I was admittedly distracted by my efforts to stabilize the mark before it killed the Herald."

"Seeker Pentaghast," Margo interjects, before the warrior's anger sidetracks them further. "It is, in fact, a subtle thing. Evie wears her bangs over it, and conceals it with powder. And the scar itself is faint. Only visible at a certain angle, and I suspect in a certain light."

Cassandra sighs heavily, and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Very well. Let us suppose such a thing could be kept hidden. Solas. You are the mage. In your estimation, is the Herald, in fact, a Tranquil?"

The elf ponders his answer, but then shakes his head firmly, once. "No. Her connection to the Fade is weak, but no weaker than any average warrior's. Or farmer's. It has not been severed. Or if it has, the process was either incomplete, or did not bear fruit."

"I take it we know Tranquility can't be reversed?" That's Varric, trying to account for all possibilities.

Cassandra shakes her head. "That should not be possible, no. It is a permanent procedure."

Varric's eyes narrow. "Wait. Blondie… You do remember Blondie, Seeker?"

Cassandra winces, and then frowns. "Yes, Varric, I am unlikely to forget the apostate who orchestrated the explosion in the Kirkwall Chantry, snuffing out countless lives, and who was at the root of the mage and Templar war. I also remember particularly well that he was one of your associates."

Varric makes another one of his "hold your horses" gestures, and turns to Solas.

"Not sure how much you know about the Kirkwall mess, Chuckles, but Blondie – Anders, that is - had a friend. Karl, his name was, I think. A mage who had been rendered Tranquil in the Kirkwall circle."

Solas nods, seemingly in encouragement for the dwarf to continue.

"Anyway, Anders was… special. Though most of that was Justice, I guess. Drove him completely raving mad in the end, but that's not the point of this story. The point is, Hawke, Anders, and I… we got into an altercation with some Templars, and Justice surfaced. Scary glowing eyes, voice from the grave, the whole thing. Helped us escape the Templars, but that's not the point either. The point is that suddenly Anders' friend, Karl, reverted back to his old self. Emotions and all. It didn't last long, though, because as soon as he did, Karl asked Anders to put him out of his misery."

"Your mage friend was possessed by a spirit of Justice?" Solas asks, eyebrows drawn in query.

"I don't think it was that simple, Chuckles. He was Anders first. And then, slowly, he changed. By the end of it, there wasn't much of him left in there, I don't think."

"Yes. Let it be clearly stated once and for all that the apostate was, in addition to everything else, an abomination, Varric." Cassandra's anger is still simmering right below the surface.

Margo tries to follow all of this. From what she can glean, there was some kind of terror plot involving one of Varric's former friends – or acquaintances – that served as the trigger for the beginning of the Mage/Templar war. Apparently, temples in Thedas have the unfortunate tendency to blow up. She wonders whether this Anders had done it as a deliberate provocation, a way of escalating a long-festering conflict.

Whatever drove the decision, Margo concludes that the important part here is about the relationship between Anders and whatever "Justice" is. It doesn't help that the term "abomination" appears to refer to a whole range of different experiences, although all revolve around the entanglement between a human and a spirit. Margo wonders what such a relationship would be like, and, recalling the cosmic asshole, shudders.

But all of this feels tangential for the moment – there was an important argument Varric was trying to convey.

"Karl," she finally remembers, and waves her finger in the air. All eyes turn to her, and she clears her throat in a heroic effort to repress another bout of idiotic giggles. _Abominations, Karl!_ Alright. She can do this. Focus. She can have an intellectual meltdown later. "In the presence of Anders – his friend, this tranquil mage, you say he reverted to normal?"

Varric nods, and gestures a "voila!"in Margo's general direction.

"Yes, but not just Anders, Prickly. Justice. When Justice took the reins, Karl got better."

"A spirit's presence in the waking world would make the Veil grow thin. In your friend's company the mage most likely found that he could touch upon the Fade, however briefly." Solas's sing-song utterance has the effect of jolting Margo out of her cognitive muddle.

"But once the spirit is no longer present, would the effect revert?"

Solas confirms this with a nod. "Yes, lethallan. A Tranquil mage is maimed beyond repair. Tranquility is no less permanent than an amputation."

Or a lobotomy, Margo thinks to herself. You might make a prosthesis for an amputation.

She glances at Varric, who sports a slightly unfocused expression, as if he is trying to put together several parameters that have no particular desire to be combined.

"I do not mean to interrupt this discussion, but shall we return to the problem at hand? The Herald? Have we not established that she is not, in fact, Tranquil?" Cassandra drums absentmindedly on the table.

It's Margo's turn to shake her head. "Seeker, wait. Could a Rite of Tranquility be botched? Or… altered?" She taps her nail on the page of the alchemy manual. "There is something about Evie that is… unusual. I obviously cannot speak of the magic that is involved in this procedure, but it is at least partly alchemical, if it involves Lyrium. The tome here describes the precursor stage of Lyrium processing necessary for the operation, and it is quite complex." She is about to launch into a speculation of how the commodity chain of Lyrium production would require for the mineral to be processed off-site, thus potentially decreasing standardization, but cuts herself off abruptly. It is plausible that Maile might have wished to learn alchemy. It is considerably less likely that she would spew off a political economy analysis of the lyrium trade.

And still. She can hear the shift – it's not the words, exactly, it's how she delivered them, that old, habitual speech pattern that sounds too scholarly for the role she is playing. And sure enough, both Cassandra and Varric are giving her odd looks, and Solas's expression seems to contain a rather vehement warning.

"I have been meaning to ask you, Agent. Are you in fact from Nevarra?"

Shit. Like watching a train careen off a bridge, while sitting in the last car. Margo swallows, and, frantically, tries to think on her feet.

"In your expert opinion, would the accent pass?" she asks.

Cassandra's eyes widen in surprise. And then her expression changes, slowly, from suspicious to grudgingly impressed. "I… see." She ponders the question. "It is not… bad. It is stable, which should help you. I would assume you from the South of the country. Although perhaps not Cumberland. Your r-s are too soft, as if there is an Orlesian influence. It would not be uncommon for someone from the Fields of Ghislain region."

Margo schools her face into a neutral expression, and nods. Out of the corner of her eyes, she notices a minute shift to Solas's posture, as if some of the tension releases him as well.

"Thank you, Seeker. This identity is a work in progress."

She gets a short nod.

Varric gives her a narrowed-eye look, but doesn't comment.

"I believe Margo wishes to draw our attention to the possibility that the procedure had not succeeded. In your experience, Seeker, could such a thing occur?"

Cassandra's scrutiny shifts to the elf, and Margo wrestles down the overwhelming desire to get up and kiss him. And, if she is to be honest with herself, not strictly in gratitude, either.

By this point, Varric is frowning, the unfocused look resolving itself into one of alertness.

"We're missing an important detail, here. That brand – Prickly, you said it's so faint you can barely see it? The question we need to ask is why? Cassandra, the forehead branding – wasn't that primarily a Kirkwall thing?"

Cassandra nods slowly. "Yes. It was… Unfortunately, Knight Commander Meredith encouraged such public displays. The forehead scaring was certainly not a necessity."

"To mar the face in such a way is to claim ownership. No different than the markings of a slave." The quiet gravitas of the statement draws Margo's eyes towards the elf again. She is not alone. The other two are also fixing him with their gazes. Solas's face is still carefully neutral – that pleasantly polite expression, again – but she senses something else beneath the sculpted mask. Some kind of ineluctable, almost cosmological wrath.

"A slave's markings are meant to have an audience, Chuckles." That's Varric. "What's the point of making them so subtle you can barely see them?"

Cassandra nods in agreement. "Yes. It makes little sense. Perhaps the agent is right. The procedure was aborted, and the scar remained incomplete."

Margo stills because, finally, whatever had been brewing in the back of her skull about the oddity of Evie's scar suddenly lends a clear image. The scar isn't incomplete. In fact, it is too careful. Too perfect.

She's pretty sure she turns momentarily slack-jawed under the impact of the insight.

Of course. She should have figured this out earlier.

"Varric," she says carefully. "You are a merchant, yes?"

The dwarf's expression grows puzzled. "When I'm not being dragged around Thedas and interrogated, sure."

"A merchant house would use insignia to help a customer identify its wares, would it not? To authenticate them?"

Varric nods, and then his expression drifts – from puzzled to stunned to the sudden, blinding light of understanding. Margo looks at the other two, and they are in lock-step with the dwarf. Solas abruptly detaches himself from the wall, and begins to pace around the small room. Cassandra's hands are tightly clasped together, the knuckles white.

"You're saying the scar's a kind of merchant's mark, Prickly?" It's a question in name only. Varric already knowns the answer.

Margo nods. A brand in every sense. Including in her world's typical usage of the term.

"It's the most logical explanation, no?"

"But we do not yet know what it signals, if anything!" Cassandra, trying to grasp at the last straws of sanity before everything she thought she knew about her world careens off kilter. "We do not know whether there is any connection between this presumed tranquility rite and the luck-bending problem. Or the Mark itself, for that matter. For all we know, the bad luck is the result of the Mark!"

"And yet, we stand no chance of disaggregating the three issues without investigating further." Solas pauses in his pacing, and leans a shoulder against the bookshelf. "Unless we learn what has been done to Evelyn Trevelyan, we are doing little more than grasping blindly in the dark."

Margo nods, and briefly catches the Solas's gaze. There is a question there – a barely perceptible tilt to one eyebrow - which she interprets as a request for a private conversation sometime down the line. She inclines her head in a tiny nod.

"Shouldn't we be asking why this was done in the first place?" Varric leans back in his chair. "We seem to be missing a crucial narrative ingredient. Motive."

"Varric is right. But, for now, there is a more pressing matter." Cassandra straightens, her jaw set at an angle that suggests she is entirely done with the hand-wringing part of the exercise. "Yes. We must investigate. Vivienne, as I recall, is familiar with Ostwick. She may be a valuable resource, and I shall approach her. But in the meantime, we also must act. How wide is the radius of the Herald's… luck bending effect?"

"Perhaps thirty feet?" the dwarf ventures. "I'm not sure. It seems to… vary."

Cassandra shakes her head again.

"Whatever it is, it seems clear that the only viable route for closing the Breach is the Templars. We know that the Herald is capable of closing rifts. That is, in fact, one of the only obvious signs of success we've had so far. If the luck bending effect is magical in nature, then the Templars will hopefully suppress it too. Which brings us to the question of how to secure their allegiance. May I, agent?"

Cassandra gestures at a free page in Margo's journal, then she extracts the graphite stick from the journal's binding, and draws a quick, rough map of the Hinterlands.

"I will speak to Leliana and Cullen. We must shift our strategy to a campaign, and away from a set of discreet and decentralized operations. Tomorrow, at first light, we will constitute separate units. We must coordinate troop movement such that we have a rotation schedule. I do not want the Herald to be accompanied by the same team throughout. It is too exhausting and dangerous." Cassandra, settling into the role of military commander, suddenly seems entirely at ease. Margo looks at her other companions, and notices a small twinkle to Varric's eyes, as if he's actually appreciating the show. "We know that a large contingent of Templars is camped out here," - an 'X' appears on the map - "and here. The mages are over on the other side of the refugee settlement. We will hit the two sides with parallel attacks, and dismantle the strongholds. We will then have the Herald move through the area as a… figurehead. All she will need to do is appear in the right place, and at the right time. We will also recruit aggressively while we're there, and by the time Josephine is ready to sweet talk her Orleasian nobles into helping us with getting an audience at Therinfal Redoubt, we will have something to show for ourselves."

Varric leans forward, chin on his fists, and looks up at the Seeker.

"The kid's especially hard on the mages, Cassandra. We need to make sure they have enough breathing room" he states simply.

Cassandra nods.

"Yes. The three of you. Report to me tomorrow morning, by morning chant at the absolute latest. I need someone who is … aware of the problem in each patrol. In case things do not go as predicted."

Everything about Cassandra's plan seems reasonable. And yet, Margo cannot shake the nagging feeling that the solution, such as it is, is merely cosmetic.

* * *

This chapter is brought to you by "brand," which, interestingly enough, is etymologically related to "burn." Also by "Abominations, Karl!"

Next up: Solas and Margo, some Fade stuff, and then a few chapters of campaign/military action drama.


	27. Chapter 27: Night Terrors

_In which Margo gets a visit from an old friend._

* * *

They all agree to walk back separately, with five minute intervals. Margo is the second to leave, after Cassandra. Outside, the wind howls, and a raspy, dry snow is hurled horizontally in a wall of white noise so thick you can't see further than your outstretched hand. She stumbles back over a path entirely concealed by the white-out, trying to hide her face from the icy gale.

By the time she gets within the enclosure, Haven is more snowbank than village. Margo wades her way to the Apothecary. She's not entirely sure she will actually make it there – she has the distinct vision of falling into a particularly deep snowdrift and staying there as a frozen human-sized popsicle until the spring, especially since the process is well underway: she can't feel her toes, and her fingers are turning into claws. But she does make it to the door, even though it takes several tries to crack the ice off the hinges, and get it to open.

She stumbles into the warm space, and begins to peel off layers of snow-encrusted armor and clothing. She's alone in the Apothecary – an unsurprising circumstance, since Adan is rarely around in the evenings – so the fire in the chimney is little more than embers. She restacks it before climbing up to the rafters.

Another layer of damp clothing peeled and left out to dry, and she's asleep on her pallet before her head hits the straw.

The scent greets her first. Not a single scent, exactly, but an intermingling of smells: clay soil, pine resin, the heady, sweet aroma of something blooming – jasmine and something else mixed in, more subtle. Maybe moonflower. There is a warm breeze on her skin, soft and a little cloying with all those pheromonal seductions meant to lure nocturnal insects. She knows where she is, of course, even before she opens her eyes, which is why she puts it off for as long as she can. Until she sees it, it doesn't have to be real.

But then, the creeping sensation of being watched becomes too much. And, of course, it turns out she is not alone – but she knew that the second the dream began.

"Have you missed me, ma da'elgar?"

The thing that is not Solas is sitting on the edge of her daughter's grave, on the little wooden bench that Jake had carved especially to fit within the wrought iron enclosure – out of bog oak, the wood hard as stone - and completed, slowly, painstakingly, by day 43 of the 49 day wake.

Margo stares at the doppleganger, the feeling of violation at the fucking bastard invading this most intimate, sacred of spaces so profound she's not sure she can find words.

"How dare you?" she finally asks, her tone flat.

The thing stands up, and brushes dry pine needles off its tunic.

"Such a beautiful place, dear heart." It tilts its head, something insectoid to the movement. "What a curious little creature you are - so much beauty wasted, and on what?"

"Leave" Margo says, and takes a step forward. She can feel her nails digging into the skin of her palms, but it's a faraway sensation, a distant echo bouncing down the prism of pure, glacial fury.

"Ah. Have I hit a note?" It approaches, trampling the hyacinths under its feet with the soft, juicy crunch of stems and flowers. It steps over the low fence.

"You know I could rip this memory from you and it would leave nary a trace?" it asks pleasantly. "Pluck it out like an irritating weed. Here, and gone." It considers her with the elf's mineral grey eyes. "What need do you have of it? Nothing left of her, or you. Any of you. Your precious matriline. Gone."

"I will kill you" she responds, somehow matching the thing's conversational tone. She is at a point that lies so far beyond anger, so far off the axis of her ordinary emotional habits, that it is outside of her ability to fathom, or anticipate.

"And I will have you." It smiles, though the expression is anything but jovial. "Or what remains of you, at least. It's merely a question of time. I can wait. Until stars burn out if you don't make up your mind. Your feeble protests just delay the inevitable." It comes to rest in front of her, perhaps a foot away. Its physique an exact, perfect imitation – except, of course, that it feels all wrong, in a perverse sort of way. "But I've started off the wrong foot, again, have I not? I'm here to offer you something. Since you refuse my gifts, then a deal. A fair deal."

Margo stands her ground, even if her skin prickles with revulsion.

"There's nothing you can offer me, thing. Leave."

It smiles, expression morphing from a kind of hard-edged, triumphant cruelty to gentle, heartbreaking tenderness in the blink of an eye.

"What if I told you how to help your friends survive that terribly, awfully lucky leader of yours? Such killer luck, is it not? You wouldn't want to lose anyone to it. Ah, but luck is a fickle mistress. What if it all runs out for our dear little girl – and then, what will become of this new world of yours? What a delightful dilemma, don't you find?"

It starts to circle her, and she moves with it, like a sunflower following the sun, not letting it come up behind her back.

"Perhaps next time, the dwarf's crossbow will explode, an errant shard puncturing his throat before a healer can get to him. Four quarts is still a lot of blood, when it's all out like that." It pauses, and licks its lips. Margo weathers a wave of sudden nausea. "Or the beautiful warrior could slip on a cobblestone and hit the bone over her temple at just the wrong angle – very soft, the bone there. Might even think she's only sleeping."

The thing's eyes go out of focus, distant and trained on the outline of an invisible horizon.

"Or your gallant Warden just might not dodge that blow in time." It makes a sad little noise in the back of its throat. "Tricky thing, double-handed axes. Not all of us are meant to keep our heads, hmm?"

It comes to stand in front of her again, and raises its hands, as if to cup her face. Margo recoils.

"Ah, but do not let me forget. Your wolf! Yes. Body, broken from magica exhaustion, crumped in a breathless heap on the floor." The thing that isn't Solas shakes its head. "Have you seen red Lyrium yet, ma vhenan? No? It looks a little odd. Although I suppose all Lyrium looks a little odd when it's protruding from one's chest, hmm? Makes all sorts of unmentionable things rise up and seep out, every which way. Potent even in death. Doesn't make for a pretty corpse - not peaceful at all, all that seepage. And no matter what else you are, you are all, still, such fragile little vessels, are you not?"

"You can take you prophesizing and stuff it up your immaterial rectum" Margo grinds out between her teeth.

The thing claps its hands and laughs, a merry, warm sound.

"Oh, I do like you so, little spirit. You have fire. But you're not listening. I offer you a simple solution. I can tell you how to prevent all that from happening."

It slithers up to her again.

"Is a kiss such a high price to pay for the safety of your friends? Are you so selfish that you would deny them their best chance at survival just because you don't find me to your liking?"

"Yes." Margo tells it. "Fuck off."

"Then let us see if we can fix that."

And then, the thing begins to morph.

It's fast. Before Margo can blink, it shrinks in size, limbs shortening and filling out, skin darkening to a rich, creamy olive tone. Hair sprouts from its head, until the skull is hidden behind a corona of curly ringlets, a deep chestnut brown. Its face miniaturizes, features mutating – a button nose, a little bow of a mouth, and large hazel eyes ringed by long eyelashes.

Margo looks down in utter, soul-sucking terror.

Lily – because, of course, it is her – never did look like this. Here she is about three – over half a year past the time when the illness ate her alive. She is glowing and healthy, chubby and dimpled like the world's most huggable rubber ball. She is wearing the dress that baba had knitted for her last journey – bright yellow, with big red flowers – and two ponytails, sticking out like little curly antennae, on each side of her head. She's right at that cusp between toddlerhood and childhood, where the outline of the little girl she will become shines through the still babyish features.

"Mama?" Lily says, a bright sound, like silver bells, and then her chin begins to tremble, the shock of mom suddenly reappearing after a long absence. "Mama… Mama!"

Margo feels her legs buckle under her, and she falls, on her knees, onto the lush grass, and is suddenly eye-level with her daughter. Lily extends her chubby little arms – in the last year of life, she never did have those sweet dimples at the elbows, because she could never keep on the weight. Big fat tears creep slowly down her round cheeks.

"I missed you, Mama. Can I have a hug?" She doesn't quite pronounce her 'h-s' yet, so 'have' comes out as 'av.'

"Oh my baby" Margo sobs. It takes everything she's got – everything she's ever had – not to scoop up her daughter in her arms.

Because, of course, it isn't her daughter.

She digs her fingers into the earth, the scream inside her gathering power.

"Mama?" Lily asks, big round eyes growing foggy with hurt and fear. "Mama, are you mad at me?"

"I'm sorry, my bunny. I'm so sorry. You're gone. This isn't you."

Margo feels the tears roll down her cheeks, but they seem like the least relevant thing in the world at the moment. In the end, she doesn't quite know what she does, except something inside her shifts, fractures, and then rearranges itself into a new, sore, and profoundly other configuration.

The moonflower vine that climbs the scaly reddish pines moves and slithers towards her, the soft delicate flowers like alien eyes, rotating slowly along their axial stems in the cloying, perfumed darkness. The grass under Lily's feet shudders and bends, tiny prehensile hairs. The scent of jasmine thickens to something you could choke on. It all pulses under her skin, verdant, vegetative, perversely aware, the Fade responding to an articulation of her consciousness, old as her own sense of self, and likely older, as old as baba - or whoever (or whatever) came before her. The thing that pulses through the archaic roots of the matriline.

"Go back to sleep, my love" Margo tells the apparition, because thinking of her as a mere mask would break her.

The vines twine around Lily's little legs and arms and lift her up, gently, over the enclosure, swaying and rocking her towards the grave. The earth under the trampled hyacinths turns soft and loamy.

"Mama, no! Please!" A desperate sob. "Mama mama I don't wanna go to sleep! It's dark in there!" The child breaks into a heart wrenching, anguished wail. "There's monsters!"

Margo covers her ears with her hands, shuts her eyes tight, though she does not need to see to animate the plants – the Fade is all too happy to anticipate her wishes. She's pretty sure she's screaming through all of this, but the knowledge is hypothetical. Later, when she tries to describe the events to Solas, she will break down into hysterical, hiccuppy sobs because there are absolutely no words in any language to capture the feeling of dragging your own daughter's struggling body into the soft earth of an upturned grave.

And then, at length, it's over, and Margo lets go of the fabric of the memory, allowing for the flora to settle back into passivity. She opens her eyes.

The thing that is not Solas is sitting, once again, on the bench. The hyacinths on the grave are undisturbed.

The creature beams at her.

"What a rare find you are, dear heart. I just knew there was something interesting about you."

Slowly, Margo straightens.

"This is not yours. This will never be yours. Fuck off" she whispers, and then, drawing on whatever fractured jagged thing that now snags at her insides, pulls the membrane of the memory into herself, and past the incorporeal body of the demon. Like trying to pull a rug from under someone's feet. The effort of it is monumental – like shifting an entire system of coordinates from under the universe it structures.

There's a momentary expression of surprise to the mask the thing wears, and then the cosmic asshole vanishes, like the bad dream he is.

Margo opens her eyes, and leans off the straw pallet - just in time to vomit a thin stream of bile, mixed with clumps of half-coagulated blood.

She gets up, and then almost collapses back onto the floor. Gets up again – slowly this time - and leans her forehead against a roof beam until the world stops spinning. Slowly, meticulously, she makes her way down the ladder, trying not to slip and break her neck in the process – though, judging by the way she feels, that might actually be a mercy.

Back on the ground floor, she unstoppers an elfroot potion, and downs the contents in several long gulps. The nausea passes, but slowly, as if the efficacy of the draught is diminished by her body's unwillingness to absorb it.

After about five minutes of sitting at the desk and mindlessly collecting bits of some kind of pulverized insect from the cracks in the wood – Master Adan did leave a spectacular mess – she feels solid enough to go clean up upstairs.

Outside, it's still pitch black – she's awake in the dead of night, yet again – but at least the snow has stopped, and she can see unfamiliar clusters of stars through the window. It's dark enough in the room that their glow isn't drowned out.

She's Ok. If she doesn't think about it. She's fine.

She drinks another potion, and then realizes she is in a state of general undress – wearing not much more than the linen shirt – but the thought of fussing with the wrappings and armor feels like the equivalent of trying to ascend Mount Everest skipping on one foot the whole way up. Still. She uses the dried, frayed stem of a vandal aria to clean her teeth and mouth, and then opens the door quickly, gathers a handful of snow, shuts the door, and uses the snow to wash her face.

See? Fine.

The night is bright and silent. She's so busy actively ignoring whatever is happening inside her head, that her focus, now directed entirely to the outside world, snags on an unfamiliar object she had somehow overlooked earlier. There's a bottle, containing some kind of amber liquid, in the courier basket by the door. She picks up the folded note that accompanies it. It is addressed to "Apprentice Alchemist Margo, Agent of the Inquisition."

She breaks the waxy seal.

" _Dear Agent,_

 _I believe you were sent to us by the Maker himself. Our digestively challenged guests are reporting that their levels of discomfort are much lessened already, thanks to your efforts. I am including a small token of my gratitude. It is Antivan – not the best year for that vintage, but far above average._

 _With appreciation,_

 _~Lady J. Montilyet, Ambassador_

 _PS: If you have a moment tomorrow, I wish to request a short consultation regarding another matter. I would be in your debt._

Margo folds the letter, and places it on the desk.

And then considers the bottle, still in the basket.

She could just down its contents. Why not? Is there, in fact, a good reason not to?

She's not sure how much time passes. In the end, the only thing that stops her is the knock on the door.

Margo gets up without really thinking about who might be visiting the Apothecary in the dead of night in the middle of a monumental snow storm, and flings the door open. She is slammed with a frigid gust of wind, her skin covering in goosebumps.

She's entirely not surprised to discover that it's Solas.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Ipomoea alba, or moonflower, which in fact does bloom at night, and in some traditions of herbalism is used to treat snakebite._

 _Also, the chapter contains a really bad 1990s B-movie Easter Egg. Imshy sometimes stops channeling Hannibal Lecter and picks up other villains to ventriloquize. In this case, it's Chris Walker from The Prophecy._

 _Next up: Solas and Margo, late night philosophical debates, and navigating tricky waters._


	28. Chapter 28: Deus Ex Machina

_In which trouble comes in threes. Warning: NSFW_

* * *

"Da'nas?"

Margo steps aside, gestures at him to come in, and shuts the door behind him.

She doesn't meet the elf's gaze, but fixes her eyes somewhere on the interior wall, which, aside from a thick crust of alchemical grime, has exceptionally little to recommend it.

"Ma da'nas, what happened?"

Turning to look at him requires the kind of bracing effort that setting a dislocated limb would. On the count of three…

In the end, she does it, the breath rushing out through her teeth with a soft hiss. And then it is just Solas. Traces of recent sleep still there in his rumpled clothing, and in the reddish imprint on one cheek.

"I felt a strange disturbance in the Fade. I sought to find you, but could not."

He looks her over, frowning in puzzlement. Realizes what she is wearing. Colors. Slightly at first, and then quite a bit more noticeably. His frown deepens, morphing from puzzlement to concern.

"You'll have to excuse the appearance. I wasn't expecting visitors." There. That sounds like a completely reasonable statement, given the circumstances.

His eyes take her in one more time, and then he regroups and focuses on her face.

"Tell me what occurred," he urges softly.

Her attention returns to the wall. She feels trapped, and hence vaguely resentful. She was fine. This needs not be dealt with now. Or ever. If she just ignores it…

"Margo."

Her name on his lips hooks her like a summoning. It also jolts her out of the dissociative state, and slams her right back into the here and now – a change of circumstances for which she feels no gratitude whatsoever. But ostrich politics never gets anyone anything other than a mouthful of sand, so Margo does the next most logical thing under the circumstances. She pads, barefoot, over to the shelf that contains the glass beakers. Selects two that could, if one squints, pass for whiskey glasses. And then returns, and hands one to the elf.

"I will explain, but I need an… analgesic. However, I would rather not drink alone. Would you…?" she waves her hand at the bottle of Antivan stuff in the basket by the door.

To his credit, the elf not only takes this new development in stride, but does so with flare. He plucks the other glass from her hand and sets both on the desk, then examines the contents of the courier basket, lifts the bottle, and extracts the cork with a quick flicker of fingers and a wave of ozone. He lights one of the larger candles on the workstation, and the room is bathed in a soft, warm glow. And then he pours two equal measures of the amber liquid – which, to Margo's surprise, fills the air with the scent of an expensive Madeira – into the glassware.

"Sit," he says, and it doesn't sound like much of a request at all. She complies. He hands her the drink, and settles on the chair opposite her, with his own glass in his hands.

"To whose benefit should we toast today?" he asks, and while there is just a trace of a smile in his tone, the question in fact feels deadly serious.

"May all living beings benefit," Margo offers formally, if rather dryly. She leans forward and clinks her glass against his.

"An overly generous proposition," Solas notes, and takes a sip. Margo notices a brief flicker of surprise on his features. She sticks her nose in the beaker, inhales, and then brings the liquid to her lips. It is rich, smooth, and delicious.

"Tell me what happened."

She leans back in her chair, and briefly considers her general state of undress. Well, at least she did bother with underwear, so there is that. She crosses her legs – there are no dignified ways of pulling this off in a tunic that doesn't extend much past her upper thighs, but that's life – and proceeds to tell her second nocturnal visitor about the first one.

Eventually, as the story unfolds, her detached façade begins to crack. And then, finally, when she gets to Lily, it comes crashing down. When she finds herself racked with helpless sobs, Solas gets up quickly, but before he can make his way over to her, Margo meets his gaze and shakes her head once.

"This one, I can't outsource to you," she whispers, and even if perhaps he does not fully understand her words, or why she refuses the offer of comfort, he seems to decipher her expression well enough, and settles back into his seat.

At length, the tears run dry, and somehow, with Solas as her silent, patient witness, the ruptured thing inside begins to mend a little. Margo wipes at her cheeks, and finishes her story.

Solas remains silent for a long time.

"It appears that the Forbidden One is escalating his overtures" he finally comments, voice carefully neutral. "But we suspected this would happen. When was the last time he visited?"

Margo thinks back to the Avvar prison. Right. She never did tell him about that.

"Not since the Avvar," she says.

"You did not mention this," he observes, again with that oh-so-careful neutrality.

"I did not" she confirms. "Amund – the Avvar ritual specialist - interrupted the dream. He told me that I needed to stop… inviting Imshael."

There is a kind of banked intensity to Solas's gaze, and Margo averts her eyes. "I had thought that there was, in fact, a chance that I was bringing this on myself."

He shifts in his chair.

"No more than a brightly colored fruit is deliberately tempting you to eat it."

She cuts him an incredulous glance.

"Do I look like a brightly colored fruit to you?" she asks, in fact partly curious whether there is something about her presence in the Fade – aside from the mismatch between body and spirit Solas had mentioned before – that might be helping Imshael latch onto her.

"At the moment?" There is definitely the trace of something cheeky that flashes briefly underneath the overlay of concern and discomfort. His eyes flicker over her, and Margo half expects his next line to be something flirty and vaguely inappropriate. But he surprises her.

"No, ma da'nas. Never anything so common," he answers, voice quiet.

It's definitely not just warm and fuzzies this time, and Margo takes up the task of carefully examining an entirely uninteresting crack in the floor.

When she meets his gaze again, Solas's expression is grim.

"I suspect he is feeding on you. Your symptoms after your dream suggest… some damage."

Margo winces. And then, slowly, realization dawning, nods.

"Right. The choices. It's still getting me to make choices – even if it's not the choices it claims it wants." She looks up at her companion, the full horror of the situation suddenly coming into sharp focus. "Wait. Is it just distracting me with the illusion of a preferred choice? Is it possible that the mere act of choosing – however one does – would be enough for it to feed?" She can feel her eyes go wide with the sudden insight. "So the second it makes an offer..."

Solas gives her a long look, and then nods, reluctantly.

"I believe it is possible. It is an ancient spirit, and has had ample opportunities to evolve its techniques. Though you have managed to gain an advantage over it in your last encounter, it is clearly still intent on you."

Margo returns to the stimulating task of staring at the floor, because the next logical question is not one she is ready to face herself – let alone, with someone else present. Not even him. Especially not him.

"Could its prophesizing be true?" she finally asks, voice carefully modulated. "If the situation I'm in is a double bind anyway - as in, fuck if you do, and fuck if you don't - then the most strategically logical option, in the grand scheme of things, might be to cut a deal." She swallows. "All living beings benefiting, and all that."

Solas does not respond for a long time, and as the silence stretches, Margo closes her eyes, for fear that this will culminate in exactly the kind of answer she's afraid she must face.

When she opens them, two things have shifted. Solas is no longer in his seat, and her glass has been refilled.

The elf, in fact, is crouching at her feet, his hands on the armrests of her chair, bracketing her bare legs.

"No" he states, eyes intense with some undecipherable emotion. "I…" Judging by his expression, he's looking for words to convey just how much the idea does not appeal, and is coming up profoundly short. "The price it would exact would not be worth whatever protection it lends" he finally offers, in a suspiciously even tone.

Did baba not have similar words of wisdom to offer?

Margo meets his gaze. "I cannot shake the feeling we have little recourse as it is," she says. "And that we're running out of time and options."

"That is always the case, ma'nas." He stands up, picks up his glass of Antivan 'Madeira' from the desk where he set it, and starts to pace. She notices his dropping of the diminutive prefix in the endearment, and at the switch in meaning that this implies her heart does a painful little skip. Between "little soul" as a referent for her strange predicament, and the possessive claim entailed in 'ma'nas' - 'my soul' - the contrast suddenly feels vertiginous. Before she can get lost in semantics, he continues. "There is… always too little time. But in this interval left to us, at least for tonight, I would rather have you ponder more pleasant things. The next few days may prove harrowing enough." He pauses, and turns to her. "If you are not intent on sleep, would you speak to me of your world? It is not over wine, certainly, but perhaps an adequate alternative?"

She looks at him incredulously, and then finds herself smiling, despite herself.

About twenty minutes from there, and of all the paths they could have traveled, a heated debate over Descartes is not one she would have anticipated. She's not even entirely sure why they ended up with that particular topic in the first place, but his questions queried her about her world's influential philosophical traditions, while she kept returning to the problem of spirits and bodies - and Descartes seemed like one possible triangulation of the two problems.

He seems to have remarkably few issues with the whole "Cogito ergo sum" assertion. And whatever it is about her explanation of Cartesian dualism and its critiques, it rubs the elf the wrong way, and he adopts a kind of crassly pragmatist position, along the lines of "well, there are spirits, and there are material bodies," which - because it feels entirely spurious coming from him - annoys Margo enough to start throwing French phenomenology at him. She could have gone to Buddhism for the non-dualist route, but she's rustier on it. He listens carefully, with a fetching little smile, and then proceeds to poke holes in the structure of the arguments.

They are on their second glass of Antivan stuff - which turns out to be deceptively strong - so in response to a particularly egregious and convoluted counterargument, Margo accuses him of sophistry. And then has to explain what it is.

Solas's expression flashes with recognition, and then turns momentarily indignant. And then he narrows his eyes and parries with his own counter-accusation regarding her debating techniques. It's a short string of Elvhen with lots of glottal stops that, after she quizzes him about its meaning, he translates as "a deliberate error in logic espoused for the purpose of pushing your opponent to adopt an untenable position."

He is leaning back in his seat, in that radical intellectual dissident pose he's coming to adopt more and more frequently in her company.

"Stop the reductions to absurdity, and I'll stop… repeat that term to me again?" She meets his gaze and waits for the next snooty accusation of deductive fallacy.

"Kiss me," he suddenly requests, voice quiet.

It shoots through her like a jolt of electricity. "That is not a valid argument," Margo notes, cautiously.

"But a perfectly valid proposition," he responds, not breaking eye contact.

Oh, it's like that, is it?

It is probably the drink, or perhaps the emotional stress, but Margo stands up, bridges the distance to his chair, and, after only a few seconds of deliberation, straddles his thighs and lowers herself into his lap.

And, to be fair, this is not quite what he had bargained for. She watches his pupils dilate, his lips parting in an involuntary sigh. "Oh," he whispers.

His hands settle on her waist, over the fabric of the linen tunic. She cups his face, thumbs tracing the contour of his cheekbones. And then, she leans in, but stops a fraction of an inch away from meeting his lips. She shifts to a more comfortable position - a maneuver met with a soft groan.

"Be careful what you wish for, yes?"

The provocation engenders retaliation. His hands travel under her tunic, and begin a slow, meticulous movement, first over her thighs, then further up, following the lines of her waist.

"Evidently so. Especially since you are wearing rather fewer clothes than usual," he comments. "It seems hardly fair."

"Is that a complaint?" she asks.

The little smile he gives her is cheeky, but his eyes on her are pure heat. Nothing playful about it. "No." He pauses. "And yes."

"That's ambivalent."

He chuckles. His hands glide over her ribs, fingertips tracing the ridge of one of her body's multiple scars. And then they travel a little higher, and she stills.

"What are you doing?" she asks, and is vaguely surprised that linguistic capacity hasn't shut down yet.

"Deciding how to resolve the ambivalence, of course."

"I suspect that resolving the ambivalence has a rather teleologically predetermined outcome." Vaguely, as if through a fog, Margo considers the likely absence of Greek influences in Common, as it pertains to the concept of teleology. The thought, such as it is, is a distant sort of thing – flickering by out there somewhere, in the mist.

For some reason, Solas does not seem to stumble over this particular linguistic divergence. Another quiet chortle, and then his hands change course, trail down, and settle over her ass. He lifts her slightly, and readjusts them such that they fit together somewhat less uncomfortably. A little moan escapes her – because, at that point, it is fairly obvious what the "teleological outcome" of their discussion might be if a few more articles of clothing were to be removed.

"If I understand the expression correctly, then Ancient Elvhen has the opposite concept," he reflects, and if the voice sounds perfectly calm, Margo's not fooled. Her hands are resting against the sides of his neck, and his pulse is frantic under her palms. He utters a complicated phonetic sequence she doesn't even attempt to reproduce.

"Meaning?" she asks.

"Something like 'an eventuality delayed indefinitely on account of its inevitability.'"

Margo tries to process this – it takes her more time than it normally would, since she is working with a handicap – but eventually she shakes her head in disapproval. "Did ancient elves have inordinately long life-spans? Only people who don't worry about mortality would come up with such a perverse idea."

His hands begin their exploratory journey again, and the insight skips away.

"You still haven't kissed me," he remarks, eyes on her lips. "Must I beg?"

"That's a thought." She leans a little closer. "Don't think I don't know what you're up to, by the way."

"What am I 'up to'?" he inquires.

She meets his gaze. "You're distracting me. But mostly, you're reclaiming Imshael's request as your own. Sometimes I suspect that your secret agendas have secret agendas. But I'm on to you…"

Before she can elaborate further, Margo gasps, and arches against him, because the elf's itinerant fingers, which have resumed their upward climb, are trailing along a particularly sensitive stretch of skin right above her solar plexus.

Judging by his body's reaction, she is not alone in her general state of unfulfilled anticipation, so at least there's that.

"Oh, very well," he breathes out. His voice comes out as a whisper, rough and a little desperate. "Please, heart. Kiss me."

The words send a jolt down her spine, and she feels her body turn soft and pliable in response, so before she loses all capacity for intentionally directed action, she rocks forward, and obliges his request.

He lets her set the pace, so she can feel, viscerally, the moment when his control begins to fray. If the elf had any compunctions about where his hands could or could not travel, by mid-kiss they are forgotten. Margo moans helplessly against his lips, because inhabiting a body one did not spend a lifetime domesticating apparently signifies that when his hands resume their upward journey and cup her breasts, the touch feels unprecedented to the point of mild shock.

He breaks the kiss and looks at her with that strange, slightly tortured frown of his that mixes, in equal proportions, desire and astonishment. And then he shakes it off in favor of trailing a line of sharp little nips along her jaw.

Margo's hands set forth on their own expedition by this point, and before long she is trying to figure out how to extract him out of his accursed sweater. The task appears more logistically taxing than it has any right to be, which brings her to the only logical conclusion that turtlenecks are morally reprehensible, and should be banned.

"Bed?" he whispers against her neck. "Desk? Floor? Wall?"

She inhales sharply at another soft bite. "Chair?" she asks, because why travel far?

"The window concerns me," he remarks, as one hand returns to her hip, and then slides over her abdomen. He undoes the string that holds her underwear in place with a firm tug, and his fingers set out towards new surfaces to explore.

By that point, Margo is no longer above begging either.

She leans to the side - which has the effect of granting him quite a bit more access, a change he immediately exploits - and blows out the single candle.

"You're overdressed," he whispers against her skin.

As it turns out, whatever part of Margo's mind is in charge of fatalism, it has somehow managed to internalize the idea that in Thedas, the universe is a faithful acolyte of Murphy's Law. And thus, when in the next instant a tentative knock resonates at the door, she's not, in fact, surprised at all.

They both freeze, but her next impulse - to flee upstairs and try, frantically, to get herself presentable - is interrupted in its tracks. The elf locks her firmly against him, and then his lips find her ear.

"Hush," he says. "They may yet leave."

They remain still for a few moments. When a second knock doesn't follow, Solas, apparently not content to let time go to waste, grazes the shell of her ear with his teeth. Margo shudders and squirms against him - and is rewarded by a surprised and mildly indignant little growl.

There's a loud, clanking thud outside - not so much an intentional knock, as the sound of something large, heavy, and quite possibly armored collapsing against the door.

They look at each other.

"I think the Deus Ex Machina just broke down," Margo whispers, and, at the elf's quirked eyebrow, dissolves into a fit of helpless giggles. "I promise I'll explain. You may enjoy the irony. Probably at a later time, though."

In the semi-darkness she can still discern Solas's expression - rueful, abstractly amused, a little worried, and utterly frustrated all at once.

"Kiss me one more time, ma'nas. And then you will get back into your clothes and we will see who is in such desperate need of an alchemist at this hour that they're willing to sleep outside your door in the snow," he says quietly. "And I will strive not to kill them," he adds, with alarming cheerfulness.

Margo nods, still stifling the giggles. She even has the firm intention of making the kiss perfectly chaste - but... well. When she breaks away, Solas gives her an accusatory look.

"Have mercy, Fenor, I am not made of stone. Unless you do wish for us to ignore your third visitor of the evening."

"With our luck?" She shakes her head regretfully, and then kisses the tip of his nose. "It's probably a matter of life or death. I don't believe ignoring is an option."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Deus Ex Machina, which usually refers to a plot device that resolves or interrupts a seemingly unresolvable problem or process, but that, in Greek tragedies, used to be an actual stage contraption that accompanies the intervention of some divine outside force into the plot._

 _Next up: Margo's third visitor._


	29. Chapter 29: Addictions

_In which Margo learns that lyrium is bad for you._

* * *

As it turns out, Margo's glib prediction about life and death is perversely prophetic.

Something snags at her. Hard to say what, exactly, but the scientifically rigorous term "bad feeling" comes to mind.

Once they disengage, Margo springs into action. The alchemy of the hormonal high mixed with the alcohol converts - thank you, Unspecified Divinity - into a jolt of adrenaline. It's a muddled, tingly sensation. She can still feel the ghost of Solas's touch on her skin - an intimate haunting. But since it can't be helped, she forces her attention to narrow down to the pinprick of immediately necessary action.

She can navigate the apothecary with her eyes closed by now, and the semi-darkness is no obstacle in her ascent upstairs. She ties the string of her shorts, pulls on her trousers, and shrugs into her jacket, not bothering with other niceties. And then she's back on the first floor. Solas, damn him, looks ridiculously presentable – if she didn't know any better, she'd think he just stopped by for a lyrium potion. Even his expression is back to his habitual pleasantly polite moue. But then he looks at her, and underneath the carefully crafted mask, a brief flash of something else, heat beneath the ice. Then that's gone too, and her sudden mood must be communicative, because she can almost feel his focus hone back to scalpel-sharp precision.

She walks over to the door, the elf close on her heels, and she feels more than sees the way his gliding gait is shifting closer to a fighting stance.

Margo opens the door.

No one.

She looks down.

There is a large crumpled humanoid shape by the threshold, curled on itself in a fetal position. And, of course, she can tell right away who it is – by the absurd fur collar.

"Commander Cullen?" Margo asks, not one to neglect stating the obvious when the opportunity presents itself.

The shape doesn't move.

What the hell? Is he drunk?

Except, the bad feeling revs up.

She crouches down, and tries to feel for a heartbeat. The skin on the man's neck is unpleasantly clammy and cold as clay.

"I can't feel a pulse," Margo states, at this stage with more confusion than dread, but that's about to change.

Solas simply steps over the Commander – rather unceremoniously, all things considered, but it does get him to the other side faster – and crouches down. His fingers palpate the man's neck, in a quick, expert gesture.

"It is still there, but faint and thready. We must get him inside. Now."

Between the two of them, they hoist Cullen up, and drag him across the threshold – he is entirely unresponsive and, from Margo's estimation, over two hundred pounds of dead weight.

They set him on the woven rug in the middle of the room, because, of course, this is not a space designed as an infirmary and there are simply no other viable options. The second their patient is on the floor, Solas begins to weave a healing spell, and Margo's nose fills with the scent of ozone and the iodine twang of the ocean.

She grabs an elfroot potion from the shelf, crouches by the unconscious man, and lifts his head a bit so she can pour the liquid into his mouth. His jaws are clenched so tight she can't actually pry them open. Part of the liquid simply dribbles down his chin and cheeks, and soaks into the weave of the rug beneath.

Margo glances at Solas, and notices his grim expression. He shakes his head.

"It… He is not responding to the healing."

"How?" she asks, urgently now because in the warmth of the room, she can smell the death on him, acrid, nauseatingly sweet, and almost metallic. "What would cause the spell to fail?"

"I cannot sense anything wrong with his body. It is shutting down on its own volition."

Shit. Shit shit shit.

"Help me get the elfroot potion into him."

With Solas's assistance, she manages to pry Cullen's jaw open enough to get at least some of the potion down into his mouth. There is no swallowing reflex. Or coughing reflex for that matter. Nothing. The liquid simply spills from the corners of his lips, and dribbles down. She quickly tilts his head to the side to let the potion drain, lest they drown him in it. The man's skin is taking on an alarmingly greyish hue.

They're going to lose him. If they hadn't been fucking around and wasting precious time earlier…

"He's not breathing," Solas states, his tone clipped.

Margo doesn't hesitate.

She tilts Cullen's head back, lifting his chin away from his chest, compresses his nostrils, inhales and breaths into his mouth, hoping that enough air can get through. It's hard work, her lungs straining with the effort. She pauses after the first breath, and looks down.

It is absolutely stupid luck that he isn't wearing a chest plate. Instead, underneath the cloak, it's a simple leather jerkin, and she can see, out of the corner of her eye, his chest expand.

Another breath and she lifts up, flattens her palms against Cullen's chest, and pushes, in rapid compressions, aiming for two per second. Counts to thirty, out loud. And then does another round of rescue breathing.

Wake up. Wake the fuck up. Come on come on come on.

Then it's back to compressions again.

Distantly, she can feel Solas gather another spell. It'll be no use if Cullen doesn't breathe. If his heart doesn't start back up. She knows from experience that Solas's magic can reverse almost impossible damage, but if the body doesn't struggle to live, perhaps the magic has nothing to latch on to. There's no reviving Lazarus if Lazarus doesn't want reviving.

Then, suddenly, Cullen's body jerks, and he wheezes with his own, independent inhale.

Less than a second later Solas is pushing his magic into the prone shape, his face ethereal in the bluish glow - a phantom carved of moonlight and marble.

Margo cradles the back of Cullen's neck in the crook of her elbow, lifts his head up a little, and slowly pours the rest of the elfroot potion through his lips. He sputters, but, at length, she watches his throat work, and most of the liquid actually ends up inside rather than everywhere else.

The Commander groans, and then Margo can feel the beginning of a strange, spastic tremor. Oh no. Oh no no. She knows what this is.

He's on the verge of a seizure.

And this is where, suddenly, horribly, things click into place. The nervous jitters that night when Adan and Minaeve administered their ill-fated test. The purple circles under his eyes that never seem to go away, and that she had attributed to overwork. The sudden cardiac arrest in a man clearly at the peak of health.

But of course, none of this would have arranged itself into anything more than ominous, but random sigils if it weren't for Cullen's uncanny resemblance to her brother. And if it hadn't been for the smell. It's a different smell, but there's something about the acrid, almost chemical stench of the sweat – like burning rubber tires – that ties this night to another night, one that might as well be from another lifetime.

The night Jake overdosed.

Jake, her ridiculously talented, brilliant, always slightly unmoored brother, who picks up new skills and bad habits with equal ease, like a stray picks up burrs.

It had been a narrow thing then. He'd been clean for almost two years, but she still kept a Naloxone kit on hand, tucked away under her bed. It was stupid luck he'd been crashing at her place again for the week. It was stupid luck that the guy she'd gone on a date with had bored her within an inch of her life, and she had caught an Uber home straight after dinner, without staying for drinks, or more. It was stupid luck that it was the middle of Spring break, most of the kids had gone home or on vacation - or had already gotten most of the heavy drinking out of their system - and the little university town was down to half its population, so the roads were clear, and the ambulances were swift.

But this is not Earth. Not the quaint little artsy college town where she lived, and taught, and thought. And so, overlaying her assumptions onto this world might prove as deadly as not having a theory in the first place, even if the theory feels right.

Solas pours another wave of magic into the man who looks just like her brother, and she can see sweat beading the elf's temples. His face is deceptively relaxed, but she recognizes the effort there, in the line of his shoulders, in the way the tendons in his neck pool the shadows of the spell's glow.

Whatever he does, the impending seizure stops.

"I think he's a user," she hears herself say, watching the man of the floor settle, slowly, into much easier breathing. "What is he taking?"

The glow dims, and Solas withdraws his hands. She notices him slump back just a fraction, the movement almost imperceptible if her attention weren't so permanently, insistently tangled up in reading him, like some arcane, demanding, mind-boggling text.

"Forgive me, fenor, I do not know this expression." His voice sounds faraway and a little abstract. "But I think I understand your question." He looks at her over the body on the floor. "He is a Templar. In order to dominate mages, their Order uses lyrium to dampen magic's effects."

Of course, they do. Adan had told her as much – and she should have put two and two together. The only missing piece of information had been that Cullen was a Templar. That, she hadn't known.

"Do you think this is withdrawal, or an overdose?" she asks, hoping that the terms, despite deriving from her own world's lexis, are etymologically self-explanatory enough for Solas to pick up on the meaning.

He meets her eyes, and frowns, clearly mulling over her question. "If I were to guess, I would assume it is brought on by absence, rather than excess," he muses.

Margo nods again. "Because you felt that there was nothing to fix, yes?"

There's a fleeting flash of something close to surprised approval in his eyes, but Margo doesn't need to dwell on it for long to recognize it for what it is. She gets it. That always slightly astonishing way in which they seem to tune into some shared wavelength, even when their words – and worlds - diverge.

There is a hint of movement from the Commander, and he groans, his eyelids fluttering. "Cassandra," he rasps.

She looks at Solas.

"I will get the Seeker." The elf straightens, and before she knows it, the door is closing behind him.

Margo takes off her jacket, balls it up, and sticks it under Cullen's head in a makeshift pillow. He's back to unresponsive, but it is closer to the unresponsiveness of sleep. Either way, he's not going anywhere, and since his breathing is coming easy and deep, she trusts Solas's healing abilities enough to work from the assumption that their patient is stable, at least for now. She rushes upstairs, pulls the tunic off herself, and makes quick work of the wrappings – she has gotten fairly adept at them by now. Task finished, she gets dressed again and pulls on her boots. The whole operation doesn't take more than a few minutes. She clambers down the ladder, clears the glasses and bottle of Antivan booze from the desk, and steps outside with the cast iron pot, bracing herself against the cold.

Back in the room, she finds a few embers still glowing in the chimney, and gets the fire started under the pot, now packed with fresh snow.

Cullen stirs again, and she leaves the pot to its own devices, returning to her patient's side. "Cullen, I can help you more effectively if I know what caused this," she says, hoping she's managing to sound soothing enough.

His eyes flutter open, and his gaze, bleary at first, slowly focuses on her. "I…" - he croaks - "Andraste's Mercy, what…" He tries to get himself into a sitting position, but she puts her hand on his shoulder and pushes down gently. Not that she could keep him supine if he really put his mind to the project of sitting up, but she's hoping he'll collaborate.

"Shh. Rest. You gave us a bad scare."

He groans again. "Who is us?" His voice quavers a little. Then, a tad more firmly, but still with a good deal of alarm. "Who else knows?"

His tawny eyes start moving frantically around the room, but the effort must be straining something in his head, because he groans again, and gives up on the enterprise, letting his eyelids droop close.

"Stop trying to move around." She gets up to check on the water. The snow has melted, but it's not at simmering point yet.

"Who else was here?" There is an urgency to his question that's just one shade away from desperation.

"Me. And Solas, who helped stabilize you."

She hears a sigh. "So the apostate knows."

She turns around, and looks at him. Cullen's eyebrows are drawn together, and he is trying to maneuver himself into a sitting position again. At this point, it is clearly easier to help him than to explain why it's not a good idea. He'll probably keep trying no matter what.

She walks over, and helps him ascend into the nearby chair.

"The apostate happened to save your life," Margo remarks, voice neutral.

Cullen gives her a slightly chastised look, but then his expression changes from abashed to suspicious. "What was he doing here at this hour?"

"Picking up a potion," Margo lies without missing a beat.

"In the middle of the night?" Cullen asks. He is rubbing his chest as if something in there pains him, and Margo supposes that it probably would. She was giving the compressions her all, and despite her smaller, narrower frame, her body is deceptively strong.

"Didn't seem to stop you from coming by either, Commander," she remarks, in the same mild tone. "There's a reason Master Adan lets me sleep in here. We keep odd hours." It's a complete and utter improvisation – she's pretty sure Adan let her sleep in the rafters because he felt sorry for her - but she's not about to put up with 20 questions from a dude she just pulled from the brink of death.

That seems to give their fearless military leader pause. "Forgive me, agent. I'm being rude, aren't I?"

Margo returns to her pot of water. She waits, silent, for the water to boil and the silence stretches, uncomfortable. Finally, to give herself something to do, she assembles a tea from some available herbs – mostly on a hunch, based on the properties she's already worked with. A handful of amrita vein, mainly for taste, a pinch of royal elfroot, and a few leaves of prophet's laurel, which she's never used, but read about in Auntie's compendium. It just figures that something associated with a martyred woman would be assumed to have healing properties. Funny how things don't change from one world to the next. She still tastes the leaf, just in case, before throwing some of its brethren into the pot. It has a kind of cooling sweetness to it, somewhere between liquorish and clover blossoms. She nods to herself, satisfied.

She lets the herbs steep while she looks for something to hold the drink.

"Agent?"

"Apologies accepted, Commander," she says, ladles the tea directly into a rudimentary clay mug, and wipes the dripping liquid with her sleeve. And then hands Cullen the infusion. "Here. I'd imagine your throat feels unpleasant. This may help."

"Maker's Breath, yes. That's an understatement." He takes a cautious sip, winces, and blows on the liquid. "Agent, listen. About this..."

Before he can continue, however, the door opens, and Cassandra storms in, with Solas bringing up the back.

"Cullen. What happened?"

Margo stifles a fit of grim hilarity. She's not sure how many times this particular question has been uttered in this particular room in the last few hours. Maybe she can stencil it on a cushion later. Not that she knows how to stencil, but what's one more skill to learn for a worthy cause?

Cullen takes a look at Solas, and his expression turns stony. "I… If you permit, Seeker, we will speak of this later. Solas, Margo. I owe you a debt I hope I will be able to repay some day." He pushes himself off the chair with some difficulty. "I would like this incident not to leave the confines of this room, however. The Inquisition has enough worries as it is."

"I would advise bedrest, Commander," Solas says quietly, but he is mostly looking at Cassandra. She gives him a slight nod.

Margo watches the two file out of the apothecary, Cullen leaning on Cassandra for support. The warrior woman turns around in the doorway and inclines her head, first at Margo, and then at Solas. It could be a thank you. Or it could be a "we have an understanding, don't make me break your kneecaps." Margo decides it's likely both.

The door closes.

Solas glides up to her. He smells like snow, a hint of ozone, and wood smoke. On a whim, she encircles his waist with her arms, and leans against him, her ear against the hollow of his throat. His arms come around her in return, his chin resting against the crown of her head, and she closes her eyes with a soft exhale, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.

"I suspect this is not the last time you have to mediate Commander Cullen's predicament," he offers, tone cautious and a little tense.

Margo bobs her head up and down, unwilling to disengage. Just… ten more seconds. This feels peaceful. Not many things feel peaceful these days. "It was a close call," she finally sighs. "We…" She takes a breath, lets it out, and steps back and out of his embrace. "We shouldn't have gotten so carried away."

His eyes are on hers then, and she notes the brief flash of anger, there, and then quickly hidden.

"Do not embark on this route to self-blame, da'nas," he says quietly. "The choices he and his Order made are theirs alone, as are their consequences." She can feel the tension in the line of his shoulders, in the sudden straightness of his spine. Right. Nothing says massively pissed off like perfect posture.

She shakes her head. "Not everyone is given a choice, Solas. Sometimes, choices are made for us in advance of our capacity to do so."

And truth be told, she is not entirely comfortable with her own line of argument, but she's trying to formulate something more general about compassion – even though her words about choice taste hackneyed.

"Every new action – every time you draw your next breath - is a choice," he answers, his gaze slightly unfocused, trained on some distant, inward horizon.

"You're oversimplifying again."

His attention returns to her. He looks like he's about to take a step forward, but catches himself. "If his Order knew what you are – who you are - they would not hesitate to torture you for answers they cannot possibly comprehend, and then kill you. You owe him no succor."

"No love lost between you two, I take it?" Margo chuckles, even if Solas's words send ice down her spine.

He frowns slightly. "I do not believe Cullen to be a bad man, whatever this may mean. But I am... an apostate and an elf. Within the configuration of this world, we are natural enemies, as wolves are to sheep. It is a simple fact of nature."

She sighs. "It's not a fact of nature, it's an artifact of your world's fucked up politics." She briefly considers that she's not at all sure which is the wolf and which is the sheep, but decides it's probably better not to mention that. "Also, do you know the one about the wolf, the sheep, and the cabbage?"

He quirks an eyebrow at her. "Why do I have a feeling it will be terribly indecent?"

Margo narrows her eyes. "Apparently, because you have a one-track mind. It's actually a math riddle. A logical problem we give children to solve. I suppose I could try to make it indecent for you if you like?" She offers him a conspiratorial smile.

"Ah." His lips quirk. "Then forgive me, ma'nas. It seems that one's interpretations simply display the measure of one's own wickedness."

And at that moment, with the barely contained little smirk, he looks so entirely impish - like a folkloric trickster archetype from some Medieval woodcut - that Margo finds herself chuckling, despite the insanity of the night.

"Something amuses you, fenor?"

"You really are a special kind of bad news," she grins.

That, somehow, launches him straight into melancholy. Margo sighs. Mercurial to the marrow of his bones, as it appears.

"We can save this discussion for another night. There is the other matter of Imshael. I am having increasing difficulty joining you in the Fade - I can locate you easily enough, but you remain out of reach."

Margo nods. She had begun to suspect as much. And come to think of it, weren't most of the times that she did manage to find Solas in the Fade mediated by baba? She wonders what this could mean.

"But you clearly have a facility with shaping the Fade that makes me wonder whether…" He stops. Looks at her as if he's trying to peer inside, and then just shakes his head. "Until we are able to identify the cause of your elusiveness, you must use the skills you do possess to keep yourself safe. And if that fails, I have heard of herbs you may take to cut yourself off from the Dreaming."

Margo thinks. She had suspected there are alchemical ways to control one's connection to the Fade, but something about cutting herself off entirely feels… wrong. Or, rather, wasteful.

"I'd rather experiment a bit before I resort to the more radical options."

The elf gives her a long look. "Then be careful. I will continue to try to find you and offer guidance, if I can."

Margo nods, and rubs her eyes, which sting from lack of sleep and nervous exhaustion.

"We have an hour or so before first chant," Solas remarks, tone carefully neutral. "I can offer you a Fadeless sleep if you wish."

Margo tries to read his expression but gets nothing. The elf would be a menace at poker if he put his mind to it. "Would it require of you to stay awake?" she asks, mimicking the studiedly neutral tone.

He nods.

"Then perhaps another time. Get some rest."

He gives her a small, formal bow.

"Then I shall see you at first chant."

And for about an entire minute after the door closes behind him, Margo even manages to stay convinced that her refusal is just a matter of altruistic consideration. Nothing to do with her not trusting herself to actually sleep. Nope. Nothing like that.

* * *

 _As always, thank you so much for reading and leaving your thoughts._

 _This chapter is brought to you by a public service announcement. Stay away from addictive magical minerals. They're not good for you. Find some other way to oppress mages._

 _Next up: military maneuvers, more Fade stuff, and new alchemical experiments._


	30. Chapter 30: Battle-Ready

_In which Margo expands her arsenal._

* * *

Ougfan'sluzzil, the Avvar repeats, his large, pale fingers carefully smoothing out the grayish lichen to its full width. He peels a strip of it, and hands it to Margo.

"You must taste, Lowlander."

Margo nods, knowing better than to protest, pops the strip of lichen into her mouth, and chews thoughtfully. Her tongue tingles, her entire mouth filling with an unpleasant itchy sensation. The lichen manages to be dry and slimy at once, to irritate and numb. Also, it tastes a little like what happens when you combine toothpaste with orange juice.

"This is the male. The female is red. Ougfan'sloz."

"Do the names have meaning?" Margo asks, trying to keep her face neutral despite the awful things happening to her palate.

He makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds disparaging. "Of course, names have meaning, Lowlander." He points to the blue lichen. "Veil Key."

"And the other one? The 'sloz'?"

"Veil Lock."

She spits the lichen out surreptitiously, and looks to the others. Iron Bull is by the campfire, sharpening a claymore that's about the same height as she - and about half the width - with a worn whetstone. On the other side, Dorian - a late, surprise addition to their team - is lounging lazily on a bedroll, leafing through Master Taigan's Alchemy tome, which he pilfered, rather unceremoniously, from her backpack. Sera's up in a tree above them, her presence announced by occasional pieces of bark fluttering down into Margo's hair.

Harding, and the other addition to their team, who goes by Asher (though being one of Leliana's little birds the name is probably a fake) are gone, scouting for dinner. If some crusty ethnographic tome titled "Peoples of Thedas" exists in some dusty corner of an Orlesian library, Margo suspects that Asher's likeness would be drawn next to the "Elves" entry. If ever there were an ur-elf. The man takes Sera's derogatory qualifier of "elfy elf" and gives it a run for its money. He is pale, with long ash-colored hair, swept back to reveal a sharp widow's peak, a tall forehead, a long, chiseled, aristocratic face. His eyes are the obligatory frosty blue. And from the brief exchanges she's had with him, he is an arrogant, abrasive ass. Not a charming arrogant ass, either. Not the kind of arrogant ass that you secretly suspect might turn into the object of affection of some young (but spunky) ingenue in a torrid - but tasteful - romance novel (possibly authored by Varric). Oh no. Just your plain, run of the mill, shitweed with a huge chip on his shoulder.

Margo privately rechristens him as The Specimen.

They get into an altercation the very first night they're in the field.

Margo's in charge of preparing and stockpiling utterly absurd amounts of accelerant, in anticipation of attacking a Templar camp. The attack is meant to be coordinated to the other team's parallel offensive against the mages. The other patrol contains Blackwall, Solas, Vivienne, Varric, Cassandra, and Evie, and, in theory, they are strolling through the refugee encampment right about now, making a fuss of taking out the mages holed up in the mountains to the north, and impressing everyone with the Inquisition's willingness to do something about the mess. From there, their contingent, minus Evie and Cassandra, will wear away at enemy troops, then the team will regroup and pick off the stragglers.

It's a fine balance to strike, and Margo mulls over their predicament - they can't exclude Evie altogether because not everyone in the 'Inner Circle' is in the know, and Cassandra is adamant about keeping it that way.

Mages (hopefully) subdued, they will stroll back, victorious, through the refugee encampment, rally support, patch up the wounded, and send whomever is in fighting shape - plus Evie and Cassandra, the inseparable duo - to rejoin the Templar offensive. The whole plan hinges on Cassandra and Solas assuming that the Seeker will be able to dampen Evie's unfortunate side-effects with 'friendly fire,' unobtrusively using her abilities against the Herald and her vortex of doom.

That first night, with complicated war maneuvers on her mind, Margo is in the middle of her work, elbows deep in greasy blood lotus extract, when Asher strolls up and "accidentally" knocks over the pot, spilling its hard-earned contents on the lush grass.

"Oh, dear me," he trails. "How very clumsy."

Margo looks at him in mild shock.

"But I suppose accidents happen, don't they? Like getting your whole patrol slaughtered because you're polishing some Vint's knob," he spits out. "Didn't think the task would be so absorbing. How does it feel to be a traitor to your people?" he adds, just in case Margo remained confused about his feelings on the subject.

She's had snide remarks flung at her before, and she has certainly had her share of threats from Torquemada. Not to mention Charter's terrifying deal. But this… this is something new.

"Is there a problem?"

Of all of the people to jump to her defense, Dorian is perhaps the biggest surprise, in part because she does have a prior, longer relationship with all the others. But it's Dorian who swoops in first, looking dapper and entirely nonchalant, with the sort of quiet arrogance that makes even Asher come across as a snot-nosed amateur.

"I'm sorry. I overheard 'Vints' knobs' being discussed. I thought it proper that I should volunteer my opinion, being the proud possessor of one of those." He fixes Asher with a derisive look. "If you are so very interested in the matter of their polishing, there are tomes out there I am happy to point you to. You do read, yes? Come to think of it, I am sure I could find you one with pictures. Simple pictures."

Asher sneers. "Not going to offer a demonstration yourself? I bet our aspiring alchemist is more than willing to give it a go."

"I haven't heard her volunteer. If anything, you seem to be the one with the keen interest in the topic."

"As if I'd get anywhere near you filthy Tevinter scum," Asher grinds out.

"Ugh." Sera drops silently from her arboreal perch, the uncontained disgust in her voice so thick Margo wonders if it might be harvested for poisoning arrows. "Asher here is what gives the rest of us a bad name. 'Traitor to your people'. Kind of pillock says that with a serious face? Pish."

"Can't see the appeal of fucking the enemy every once in a while?"

That's The Iron Bull, and as always, Margo's not sure who the casual question is addressed to, exactly. The Ben Hassrath is mostly quiet, except for the occasional remark that he tosses into the conversation like one might toss a stone down a well - to see what echoes back.

And somehow that first evening interaction sets the tone, such that almost every conversation thereafter eventually devolves into barbs. Mostly, it's politics, or juvenile snipes, but with a generous helping of lewdness, primarily traded between Dorian and the Qunari, or sometimes Asher and Sera.

Apparently, aggressive sexual innuendo is just another tool in the Ben Hassrath's arsenal of intimidation tactics, and Margo feels a little sorry for Dorian for drawing it - though she also has the distinct impression that the mage is actually provoking Bull on purpose.

Harding tries to moderate them all at first, but then gives up, and keeps things strictly to business. And the Avvar looks on in profound indifference, until, by day two, even he is so fed up with the constant snarling that he decides to make virtue of necessity, and appoints himself Margo's instructor.

Not that Margo is complaining. Well, not exactly. Though the transition feels like it involves toggling between fire and frying pan. The Augur - the term he uses to identify himself, and which Margo translates as 'ritual specialist' - is a terse and demanding teacher, and his primary mode of engagement is some unholy mixture of impatience and intransigence. Also, he makes her taste everything. Including, at one point, the desiccated excrements of some rodent with an unpronounceable name. Compared to that, the lichen might as well pass for dessert.

On the upside, the Avvar materia medica extends well beyond whatever she's encountered in the compendia so far. Lichen, mosses, a whole slew of mushrooms, and not just 'some fungus.' Hardy plants that grow high in the mountains, on rocks, in crevices, under the snow. Stubborn unobtrusive things that cling to life, quietly.

Also, insects, grubs, worms, and other creepy crawlies. And, yes, a whole collection of miscellaneous droppings.

Margo gives the lichen a disgusted look.

"So, you use it to control your dreams?"

The Avvar nods. "That too. That's not why I've had you collect it." He points his chin towards the new batch of blood lotus extract. "Add it."

"What is it going to do?" Margo asks suspiciously. She's not about to spoil her hard work with some unknown ingredient.

"Hard to know in advance. Gods are different, so plants are different."

Margo frowns. It is true that there can be wide variation between individual plants of the same species, and she wonders whether the Avvar explain this as a matter of variation between spirits.

"Are specific gods in charge of specific places in the landscape?" she asks, by way of clarification.

The Avvar gives her an annoyed look. "Of course they are. Your rulers are in charge of different territories, are they not?"

"Except under the Qun" Dorian volunteers from his bedroll, with a quick look at the Qunari. "All is the same under the Qun, is it not? Amund, if Thedas were conquered by the Qunari, would this logically lead to greater homogeneity among plant life too?"

"There's still variation under the Qun, Dorian," The Bull inserts, almost sounding offended. "Asit tal-eb. Everything has its own nature. We're just better at recognizing it. It's a matter of planned organization. More efficient that way."

Dorian, apparently, was just waiting for such an opening. "And I suppose that since my nature is to be a mage, you would have me chained and gagged, just on that basis. No questions asked. No accounting for individual variations. How artfully simple!"

"I'd buy you dinner first," the Bull rumbles, with the trace of a chuckle, and Margo hears the Tevinter swear under his breath.

There is a rustle of leaves, and Harding and Asher emerge, dead rabbits in tow. A crow is perched on Harding's shoulder.

"Any news?" Sera pipes up from her tree.

Harding nods, and plops the future dinner down by the fire.

"They're in position. They'll attack at night. Let's hope the mages keep a regular schedule."

The rest of the evening is occupied with dinner, and little conversation.

Margo is too nervous to fall asleep right away, so she volunteers to take the first watch, and spends the time drawing the new additions to her pharmacopeia in her journal. The others settle into their bedrolls, but the Augur stays by the cauldron, presumably watching the mixture.

After the snoring begins in earnest, Margo turns to the Avvar.

"Amund? Can I use Ougfan'sloz to cut myself off from the dreaming?" she asks quietly.

He meditates on her question. "You could. But why would you want to do that, Outworlder?"

"I sometimes have unwanted visitors."

It's hard to say with the mask, but she's pretty sure he's frowning. In any event, when he speaks, his tone is dry. "I told you to stop calling on the wishmonger god. I can smell him on you. This will lead you nowhere good."

Margo swallows the terror that rises in her throat.

"What does it smell like?" she finally asks, because that's the first thought that pops into her mind and it has the benefit of distracting her from the desire to run away screaming.

"Like ash and ancient bones."

Well, better than yak turds. There's that.

"I'm not doing it intentionally."

The Avvar shrugs. "That is between you and the wishmonger. You wish. And he comes. I have told you already. The world is all that is the case."

Margo sighs. All the Avvar needs is subject object verb syntax and some very expressive pointy ears. And maybe a lightsaber. "Very well. How do I disinvite him? Can that be done?"

"Stop wishing."

Helpful as ever.

"Any other alternatives?"

He gives her a long look. "How do you avoid unwanted visitors? You build a house. You put a door. And you hang a lock on it."

Margo frowns. "So… I make a sanctuary."

He nods. And then reaches into a satchel, and extracts another lichen.

"Before you can make a lock, you need a key" he says, and hands her the crumpled strip of symbiotic organism. "Don't spit it out this time."

The desire to look for Solas in the Fade – and assure herself that he and the others are alive - is almost physical, like an itch in her bones. Margo scolds herself for the irrationality of it. If everything is going to plan, the last thing he should be doing is sleeping. She needs to cut this shit out. She's a grown woman. This - whatever the hell it is - is entirely undignified.

When she finally drifts off, she doesn't enter the Fade. She's violently plunged into it, dragged under by its rip currents. But once there, the experience is different. There is nothing more than a rudimentary landscape: two planes, differentiated by shades of sepia, one above, and one below. No features break the monotony, and it feels like she is caught in some kind of geometry exercise, sandwiched between two instances of abstract space.

She has no idea how to build a 'house' - or why anyone would want to do that in this place - but the concept of sanctuary keeps tugging at her, the idea there already, half-formed, waiting for its share of attention.

She doesn't know how to build.

But she knows how to grow.

She closes her eyes, and pours emotions into the image, carved out of memories as much as of the feelings that wrap around it, a sense of yearning and loss, a nostalgia that would be maudling if it weren't tinged with a deep sense of gratitude for the fact that this place exists, somewhere. She sees it in her mind's eye first. The embankment, dotted with the purple and yellow blossoms of _malempyrum_ , slopes gently towards the sluggish waters of the ancient river. A soft breeze catches in the branches of the weeping willow. The hills on the other bank stretch in purple shadows across the shimmering surface. The sun has set, and the sky is turning a piercing cerulean. It smells of summer grasses and warm earth, of green living things cooling off and furling into sleep for the night.

Further up the embankment, baba's ashes are scattered under the aspen tree. Downstream, in the little cemetery by the medieval church, her parents' graves. But in between, in the calm crook of the river, she and Jake spent countless summers lazing around in the grass, and trapping frogs. Bathing and fishing and swinging from the willow's branches and into the water with terrified and triumphant ululations. Here, she shared kisses and pilfered apples with Ivan, when it was just becoming clear that there was more to them than two sooty-footed kids growing up together in a forgotten village. Here, she brought Lily as a baby, to introduce her to the place where the roots extend beneath the earth, quiet and deep.

She opens her eyes under a cerulean sky.

The world is all that is the case.

The next day starts off about as well as you can expect, but at least Margo got some rest. Until, that is, she is woken up with a kick to the ribs from Asher.

"Get up. Harding wants you on artificer duty."

Margo doesn't dignify him with the logical question that might clarify what an artificer is. She's sure Harding will explain soon enough, and the less she interacts with the Specimen, the better off she'll be.

Bull and Sera are still asleep, snoring. The Avvar might be sleeping – he is sitting in some kind of meditative trance, chin resting on his chest, and appears otherwise unresponsive. Dorian is nowhere in sight, and Margo concludes he scampered off for toileting purposes.

"You need a minute?" Harding asks her. The dwarven woman is crouching by the fire, looking as fresh-faced and well-rested as if she just returned from a week-long spa vacation. Margo represses a jolt of envy.

She nods, and wanders off to the bushes. Business completed, she returns to the campfire.

Harding already has an elaborate diagram sketched out in the dust, and she's adding details with the tip of a sharpened stick.

"Any news?" Margo asks, trying to keep her voice low.

Harding nods. "Crow arrived before dawn. The mages are taken care of."

"How did our side do?"

The scout shrugs, something tense to the set of her shoulders. "Not too bad. Everyone's alive."

Margo exhales, not realizing until after that she'd been holding her breath.

"Any injured?"

"The Warden and the Seeker took a beating, but nothing too bad. The Herald is unscathed. The mages are mostly fine, Vivienne's wardrobe suffered, but she's fine otherwise. Tethras made it out alive too. He was the one who sent the message."

Margo feels her eyebrows shoot up in surprise at this shockingly positive news. It would appear that Cassandra's plan actually worked. And for the first time in what feels like ages, she allows herself to feel cautiously optimistic. Maybe they're not all going to hell in a handbasket, after all. Wouldn't that be something.

"So what's our next steps?"

"They will want to rest and resupply in the settlement. I'm going to guess they'll be here by the evening. We'll attack before first light tomorrow."

Margo nods. It seems reasonable.

"Is the whole contingent coming along?" she asks.

Harding shakes her head. "Vivienne and Varric will stay behind in the village."

Margo considers the combination, and the strategy behind it.

"Vivienne to reinstate trust in law-abiding mages, and Varric to spin stories."

Harding nods with a chuckle. "Yup. Vivienne will terrorize any skeptics into submission with her impeccable manners and Varric will lie his ass off."

"So what's our task? I have the impression you're not intent on waiting for the cavalry."

Harding grins. "We'll wait. But in the meantime, we're going to set a snare."

The strategy is delightfully simple. There is only one route to access the Templar camp, and it is open space and uphill, putting any attacking group at a severe disadvantage. The camp is, in fact, naturally fortified, blocked off by steep cliffs on one side, and a ravine on the other. What the Templars didn't account for is an attack from above.

It is still dark when the two Inquisition scouts, complete with ugly green hoods, materialize from the shadows, a large crate in tow. The crate, as it turns out, is filled with crude clay pots. From there, the work is finicky and monotonous, but straight-forward. Margo fills each pot with the accelerant mixture she's been collecting in a specially-dedicated barrel. Harding helps her seal the pots with cloth and resin, and Margo outfits each one with a wick. The final results look like the illegitimate spawn of a pot for pickling kimchi and a molotov cocktail.

She sets her batch of lichen-tainted stuff aside. The mixture turned overnight into sticky black ooze, vaguely reminiscent of tar, but with more personality. It sort of jiggles when moved. Whatever it is, she is not using it for making bombs before testing it for its properties. The last thing anyone needs is for the vaguely evil looking brew to start behaving in inappropriate ways instead of being a good sport and exploding.

Margo stares at the pots, because suddenly, in the unwelcome pause between actions, a thought creeps in. A very unpleasant thought. She is making bombs. Fucking bombs. Intended to kill, or at least seriously damage people, the more the merrier. Living breathing human beings.

She looks around, suddenly feeling helpless, lost and profoundly, monumentally alone. But there is no one to turn to. Every single one of the others is a killer. Safe, perhaps, for Dorian, but she can't know for certain.

And, of course, so is she.

And she doesn't have the luxury of showing even a trace of ambivalence without endangering herself and her cover. Rich and layered as Maile's reputation is, it isn't one that includes any compunctions about the ethics of her chosen path.

She's startled by a light touch on her shoulder, and looks up. The Avvar, no longer in his meditative trance, has moved silently to her side.

"You may be the arrow, outsider. You may even be the bow. But you are not the hands that pull the string. If you fly, it is because such is the will of the gods."

Margo looks at him, and shakes her head in refusal. "A convenient philosophy," she finally says, her voice quiet. "But I can't absolve myself of responsibility, Amund."

This, somehow, strikes the Avvar as hilarious, because suddenly, he's letting out a loud guffaw and smacking his thigh. The noise startles Sera and the Iron Bull awake.

"You have a prideful streak, don't you... Those men we will attack have made their choice, as is pleasing to their gods."

"But what about randomness?" Margo pleads, frustration creeping into her tone. "Don't you think your model is too tidy? You can't possibly think that everyone deserves what they get. What if someone comes into your house with a weapon, while you're sleeping? Does it mean that this is what your gods willed too?"

The Avvar's lips purse into a smile. "If someone comes into my house to kill me in my sleep, lowlander, I will simply not be there," he responds.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Amund's unapologetic shamanism._  
 _Next up: Reunions, skirmishes, and more trouble on the horizon._  
 _Note: In case you're wondering about linguistics, I am loosely deriving the Avvar dialect from High German._


	31. Chapter 31: Crow Bait

In which warnings are given, preparations are made, and Margo makes contact

* * *

When evening meal comes and goes the next day, and the others still haven't manifested - or sent a message - a lively debate breaks out in their group over what to do next. The Iron Bull, Asher, and Sera advocate for continuing with the planned attack. Harding vacillates, torn between caution and fear that the element of surprise would be lost the longer they linger in one place. Dorian remains neutral. Margo and Amund are in favor of delaying. Amund is adamant. Margo, more diplomatic.

"Are you blind to the signs, Child of the Mountain?" Amund asks the dwarven scout, after it becomes clear the pendulum is swinging towards the more immediately aggressive strategy. "Do you not see the carrion crows flying a circle over the ridge?"

Harding, clearly unsure why the Augur has selected her as the designated decision-maker, adopts a defensive stance."First off, I am a surface dwarf, Amund. And second, who's to say the birds are predicting a bad outcome for us? For all we know, the Templars are butchering a carcass for their dinner, and they're circling for the left-overs."

Amund shakes his head in dismay. "The Mountain is in the bone. You can no more renounce its bowels than I can renounce its spine. And carrion crows do not circle for a butchered carcass. They circle because they sense a battle approaching."

"How can you tell their circling is a bad omen?" The Iron Bull queries, genuine curiosity in his voice.

"The direction."

They dismiss his warning with bluster and grumblings about superstition, so Margo, who feels an increasing sense of unease prickle her spine, throws her voice in with the Avvar.

"Do the advantages of attacking now truly outweigh the benefits of a larger contingent?" she asks, her eyes flickering between the Iron Bull and Harding, because, in her estimation, the two are really the main strategists of the group.

"Our odds become worse the longer we stay." Harding pushes a stray ember back into the campfire with the tip of her boot. "Attacking during the day would be much more costly, even with greater numbers and if we linger until tomorrow night, we are risking the Templars bringing in reinforcement. With the mages out of the picture, there is a chance the other patrols will rally at their base camp to work out their next move."

"I say we take the fight to them tonight, as planned." The Iron Bull shifts his claymore, planting it between his thighs, giant hands flexing on the haft. "What's the point of sitting on our asses? We have a good mix of melee, stealth, and long range as it stands." He looks at Amund. "That warhammer of yours could use some exercise. Not good keeping a weapon bloodless for too long."

Amund grunts noncommittally.

The Qunari surveys them, his good eye catching the crimson glow of the flames. "Amund, Asher and I can rappel down the side of the ravine to that platform over the stream. Much easier to do at night. Dorian, Harding and Sera will provide cover fire from the top of the cliff. Blondie - use the bombs to hem in the Templars before you join us."

Margo considers this. "You want me to cut them off from retreating downhill?" By this point, she's got Harding's dust map of the camp memorized. She meets Bull's gaze over the flames. "Keep in mind that you will be hemmed in as well."

He nods. "That's the idea."

"It's risky," Harding volunteers, but Margo notices that the scout's body language has shifted, a kind of jittery excitement creeping into her movements. "But it's what we had planned to do if the Herald had made it to the rendezvous point on time anyway. I say a stealthy attack still gives us a much better shot than a frontal assault during the day. I hate to waste another night."

"And we can take some of them out while they're sleeping," Sera pipes up. "Oh, you were having a snooze? Blimey! Arrow to your face!" The elf laughs uproariously at this. The Bull cocks an eyebrow, but chuckles. Dorian shakes his head in consternation.

"I hate to be the voice of cautious dissent, but it seems to me that we have little room for mistakes, considering we lack a trained healer in the group," the mage offers. "My expertise is… elsewhere."

"We have an alchemist. How's our health potion supply?" the Bull asks, his eye on Margo.

She shrugs. "It's adequate. But I agree with Dorian. If we decide to do this, I would advise against spectacular heroics." She rubs her face, trying to trace the 'bad feeling' to its source, and wonders how much her worry for the others is coloring her judgement of their current strategy.

"So now, you're the cautious one. Where was that caution at the Storm Coast, hmm?" Asher looks like he's itching for a fight, and doesn't much care who the fight is with.

"There is still the question of what has happened to your other team," Amund suddenly inserts, his deep voice slicing through the atmosphere of rising battle rage.

Margo fidgets uncomfortably. That is, indeed, the question.

"And sitting here with our thumbs up our asses is gonna answer that, innit?" Sera plucks an arrow from her quiver, and starts twirling it around like some perversely pointy baton. "Maybe they all got drunk and are having a group bang in a tavern somewhere to celebrate, and here we are, wringing our hands like a bunch of fishwives. If they show, they can join the fun. Hey! We can leave them a note!" Her voice drops into an imitation of male efficiency suspiciously reminiscent of The Iron Bull. "Off to kill some Templars. Sorry we missed you.'"

Margo makes a concerted effort to scrub Sera's evocative image of a 'group bang' from her mind, and considers their options. There is, of course, the other side of the scales to consider: namely, Evie and her vortex of doom. If she arrives, they would have another risk factor to contend with. But then, this brings her to the politics of appearances that underlie Cassandra's plan.

"Shouldn't the Herald be seen neutralizing the Templars?"

The Bull fixes her with his one-eyed gaze, and Margo squirms under the scrutiny. "Seen by whom, Blondie? We're in the middle of nowhere. No settlements around. Unless Cassandra was planning to leave a strategic witness… Otherwise, it's whatever we say happened."

Margo has no retort to that. The conversation bounces between them for a few more turns, but she has the distinct feeling that the matter is settled before they run out of words.

* * *

As they begin preparations, Amund nods at her, and she follows him to where he is standing, at the outer perimeter of the camp.

"This is a bad idea, Outworlder," he says quietly. "Watch the birds." She follows his gaze to where a flock of crows flies in a gliding circle, stark black shadows against the gloaming.

"What do your signs tell you, Amund?"

"That death comes this way." His tone is conversational, on the edge of indifferent.

Margo hesitates. "But for whom?" she finally asks. "Maybe it's death for the Templars?"

The Augur shrugs. "Your Templars aren't the ones querying the Lady of the Sky. I am." He pauses. "Death isn't picky."

Margo considers his statement. From what she can tell, this is another Avvar meditation on luck, fate, and signs. Slowly, a kind of tentative understanding materializes, and she decides to test her theory.

"So, you're saying that because you're the one asking about the outcome, you are being given a specific answer - so the birds aren't a sign to just anyone, they are a sign to you ?"

Amund nods. "Of course. A man asks a question of another man in a room full of people. To whom is the answer given? To the room full of people? Or to the one who asked?"

So this is an issue of addressee. "I suppose it depends on the question. Sometimes we ask for the benefit of others."

Amund shakes his head, his dark eyes inscrutable. "There is no 'benefit'. Your question is your question. The same words in someone else's mouth are theirs, not yours. An answer cannot be collectivized, Outworlder."

Margo sighs. She would love to delve into this more deeply, to tease apart the Avvar's worldview. But there is no time, at least not now. They have more pressing matters than discussing cosmology. "Alright. What should we do?"

The Avvar watches the birds for what feels like an eternity before, finally, he speaks. "Your last potion. The one with ougfan'sluzzil. Coat the arrows with it. And your daggers. You must fight." He pauses. "Who knows. You might yet tip the scales."

"It's not an explosive, is it?" Margo asks, wondering not for the first time about the ways in which this world's alchemy lends radically versatile results with what seems like comparatively little processing.

"No." The Avvar says simply, but does not elaborate.

"Is the formula a secret?" she asks, trying to make sense of why Amund is so tight-lipped about it.

After a long pause, he shakes his head, and when he finally responds, there is a trace of humor in his voice. "It is a gamble, Outworlder. A bit like you."

Before she rejoins the others in their preparations, the Avvar stops her, his heavy hand landing on her shoulder, and practically rooting her in place with its weight.

"You have a bit of time before we must depart. Consider sleep."

An incredulous laugh escapes her at the suggestion. "You think this is a good time for a nap, Amund?"

Under the metal glint of the mask, his eyes crinkle at the corners, but she cannot tell whether it is is a smile, or a skeptical squint. Whatever the expression, it never reaches the bottom of his face. "Speak to your… friend, if you can. We must know what happened to your other people. And why the birds no longer bring the words."

Margo frowns, trying to infer how much Amund knows about her occasional ability to communicate with Solas. The Augur's speech patterns are always a little cryptic, like an imperfect translation, and she is unsure of whether this is a linguistic problem - that he is, in fact, translating in his head from whatever dialect is the Avvar's native tongue - or if it is a translation of a more spiritual sort.

"Provided I can even fall asleep. And provided my 'friend' is asleep as well," Margo objects. "That's a lot of conjecture."

Amund lifts his head, his eyes tracing the patterns of feathery clouds in the evening sky. He seems to be absorbed in some kind of silent calculation.

"Now would be a good time to try," he finally offers.

And so, with a small piece of the damnable lichen in her hand, Margo settles under a tree at the periphery of the camp, folding her body into an imitation of the Avvar's meditative pose. She contemplates the ougfan'sluzzil. "One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small," she hums. Right. Forget the lightsaber. What the Avvar really needs is a hookah and a giant mushroom to sit on.

She pops the lichen into her mouth and chews with grim determination. And then closes her eyes, and allows for her breathing to slowly deepen.

She's back to the abstract space sandwich, with nothing there but sepia-colored dust. The plane that passes for the sky has a slight green tinge, but it's weak. At least, there are no visitors when she arrives.

She closes her eyes within the dream, and tries to reach with that part of herself that, until not so long ago, she had no idea was there. "Solas?" she whispers.

Nothing happens whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. The abstract sandwich remains woefully unimpressed with her efforts.

This is a profound waste of time. She can't control these Fade calls any more than she can control the weather.

"Solas," she tries again, attempting to recollect that sense of him, the complicated weave of his essence.

Margo opens her eyes, and this time, somewhere far off in the distance, she spots a lonely figure.

Of course, it could be anyone - from here, it is just a dark humanoid outline against the sepia tint. It could be the Cosmic Asshole, for all she knows, and then she's truly fucked, because something about this way of rendering the Fade feels like a secret, like one little bit of advantage she might have over the "Choice Spirit." But for lack of a better alternative, she begins moving towards the lone visitor, first at a casual pace, and then picking up speed, and finally settling into a light jog.

Closer now, she sees the figure turn to her, and it is most definitely a familiar one.

Now, the question is whether it is the right Solas. He seems to hesitate for a few seconds, and then begins to move briskly in her direction, except it doesn't look like he's walking - rather, that the ground layer is moving past him.

Finally, they come face to face, and it is, most certainly, Solas.

"Where the hell are you?" she demands, the tension over his and the others' unexplained absence erupting into a profound failure at composure, let alone diplomacy.

But before she can follow this up with more outraged demands for an explanation, the elf is upon her, hands tangling roughly in her hair, and his lips pressing against hers. The kiss is urgent and demanding, as if he is trying to get closer than their Fade-rendered bodies allow.

Margo makes a muffled little noise that might have started as surprise, but then quickly turns into plain old need. He pulls her against him, deepening the kiss and forcing her head to dip back a little. His hands feel like they're everywhere at once - in her hair, on her back, tracing the line of her waist, and then settling on her ass and pulling her pelvis against him. And then, as if suddenly recalling himself, he lets his arms fall to his sides and sort of stumbles back, something startled and almost anguished passing over his features before they snap into neutral. For a brief moment, he looks like he's tempted to reach for her again, as if to ascertain himself that she is really there, but then stops mid-gesture.

"Forgive me. I... forget myself." He shakes his head, either in consternation, or in denial - Margo is not sure which.

"Solas? What is going on?"

Another indeterminate head shake. "You are real. And alive?" he finally asks, voice rough and low. Margo tries to read his features, but the expression is too complex to parse. It puts her in mind of a patient who had received a dire diagnosis, only to have it suddenly revoked as a lab error. She frowns, trying to understand why he would have thought her dead. Or questioned her reality.

Solas, in the meantime, starts pacing.

"What made you think I wasn't?" she asks cautiously.

He whirls towards her, the trace of a future movement there, then halted in its tracks. He forces himself to stand still. "You were gone. No sign of you in the Fade." He makes a slicing motion with his hand, as if to indicate the finality of such an absence. "There were no memories, no lingering traces. Nothing at all. As if you had never existed."

He starts to pace again, the movement seemingly helping him keep the tension locked away.

"At first, I had told myself that you were avoiding sleep, but such an assumption seemed incorrect. Even when you are awake, the Fade retains fragments - memories, emotions, attachments. Desires. One is never fully disconnected, unless Tranquil or dead. I can sense your existence, even when I cannot reach you."

"And something felt different this time?"

He nods, his eyes locking on hers. "You were no longer there at all." He pauses, seemingly looking for words. "In the Fade, time is not so… sequential. I sought you out, but all my senses told me that you had never been. If not for the others' corroboration... I had to ask Blackwall if he recalled you. I believe the Warden might think me mad." He laughs, the sound as far from merriment as is possible. "I had half a mind I had imagined you. I told myself, one more attempt to reach you in the Fade, before accepting the inevitable."

Margo takes ahold of his hand. "Amund taught me a new trick. I will tell you about it when we have more time, but the main goal was to help me avoid Imshael."

Solas's fingers interlace with her own, and then, seemingly convinced of her relative materiality, he pulls her against him once more, his other arm snaking around her waist. His eyes search her face for an answer to some arcane question, brows drawn in puzzlement. But, at length, the beginning of a smile purses his lips.

"A new trick," he parrots back, his voice an unlikely mixture of outrage, relief, and cautious amusement. "I will show you new tricks."

Margo loses herself in the kiss.

When they pull apart, not a little reluctantly, she abruptly recalls that her seeking him out in this way had a pragmatic goal.

"I would still like to know why you lot didn't show up. The others have decided to go on with the plan. We attack the Templar camp later tonight."

Solas frowns. "Did you not receive our messages? The Herald has been attempting to help the refugees, ensuring they would survive the winter months. Their situation is dire, and urgent. They are on the edge of starvation. Many are separated from their kin, desperately looking for news. A crow should have carried a request for you to delay."

She shakes her head. "We received no such messages. Have you gotten ours?"

"No." He peers at her, hesitates, then casts his gaze towards the featureless ground. "When I had confirmed you… real, but gone, I had made the only logical decision. I had assumed something had happened. I cautioned the Seeker not to proceed until we learned more about the fate of your patrol. Since there were other tasks that required immediate attention, and that would further the Inquisition's goals..."

He trails off. Margo mulls this over, and then nods. It makes sense. No matter what happened to any of them, the main priority is to keep Evie out of trouble. And the whole point of their overwrought maneuvering is to garner support. Political power. She would have likely done the same if their places were reversed, even if it would have torn her up. She looks at the elf again, and suddenly the jumble of emotions she can sense from him lends itself to easier interpretation.

"A prudent decision," she says, kicking the ambivalence under the proverbial rug, to join all her other unwelcome thoughts. Hopefully the rug conceals a pocket universe, otherwise she will run out of room.

"Yes," he says, his features turning hard, as if he's executing his own rug sweeping maneuver.

"You worried me," Margo adds, not liking his expression one bit. "I had similar thoughts regarding your fate. Minus the concern over your reality, that is."

Some complicated emotion flickers in his eyes, the primary ingredient of which seems to be doubt. "I…" With a visible effort, he shifts his focus. "Will you be able to overcome the Templars on your own? We are half-a-day's journey away."

"I hope so. Amund is worried, but the others are eager."

He nods. "Then I will advise the Seeker to make haste. Can you delay until morning?"

She shakes her head. "Harding thinks this should be done under the cover of darkness. She and Bull are planning a stealth attack."

Solas's hands come up to cup her face, and he peers at her, as if trying to impart something important without the use of words. "You will be cautious?"

Margo smiles at him. "Of course. You know me. I'll throw some bombs, insult their mothers and their manhood. The usual."

His expression turns stormy. "This does not reassure me. This will again result in me having to put you back together."

"And there's your incentive to be punctual," she teases. The elf makes a displeased little sound at the back of his throat, and pulls her into another embrace, bringing his face close.

"Must I give you an 'incentive' not to get yourself killed, fenor?"

"You can always try…"

And try he does. Whatever he laces into the kiss isn't physical, more of an added psychic dimension, where something of the underlying feelings trickle from him and into her perception. It's a kaleidoscopic glimmer of images and sensations, rendered briefly and only in fleeting flashes, there and then gone in the next instant - the ghost of a touch, a trace of a memory that isn't one. One flicker in particular extrapolates what would have happened had Cullen not interrupted them, and it sears itself into her awareness with its uninhibited, unapologetic salacity. Apparently, in that particular instantiation of a quantum probability that did not come to pass, she would have ended up on top of the work station - a scenario that, she supposes, would have taken advantage of their height difference. The image is from his perspective. Margo gasps against his lips, and then, with the one fragment of her attention that isn't entirely flooded, and that probably has to do with her entrenched empiricism, she forms her own fake memory bubble and retaliates. That one elaborates on the chair option. It's nowhere near as visually detailed as his, but what it lacks in graphics, it makes up in haptics.

And beneath it all, something else passes between them, sidestepping the lure of the physical, but it's hidden so deeply underneath other layers that Margo doesn't quite dare to try to disentangle it.

By the point they manage to separate, Margo is breathing heavily, and wondering vaguely if the flush she feels on her cheeks is visible on her dreamworld avatar. Judging by Solas's expression - and the fact that even his ears are tinged a slight pink - it most likely is. Right. It's one thing to be reasonably certain of another's apparent intentions, based on outward signs, and an altogether other thing to get a peek into their head.

"You have entirely too much facility with this," he breathes out, and then his eyes narrow in something that mixes, in an utterly incomprehensible combination, lust, humor, and suspicion. With a great deal of the first, and not a small dose of the last. "What exactly is that Avvar teaching you?"

"Hey! Leave Amund out of this - I learn by imitation. Besides, you started this."

He shakes his head. "I most certainly did not. I shared a… thought. Not the…" He clears his throat. "Physical sensations that may accompany it."

Margo represses an impending fit of undignified hilarity. "And why would the visual be fair game, but the sensory too much?" she asks, certain that his usual cheeky expression has somehow passed on to her. For a few seconds, he just looks peeved, but then the annoyance cedes its place to a wicked sort of amusement.

"I suppose that is a philosophical question?"

Margo grins. "We have a peculiar record of debating those."

"Yes. So unless you plan to follow up on that 'thought' right here, I would suggest we return to more pressing issues."

Margo looks him over and makes a herculean effort to refrain from pointing out the facile double-entendre of what "issues" might be "pressing," and where. Still, the giggles bubble up to the surface. And of course, she's pretty sure he knows exactly where the train of thought took her, because he's frowning accusatorily, another blush creeping up his cheeks.

"I'm sure between the two of us we could conjure up a bed," she manages. "Or a chair. An alchemy table?" At this point, she's dissolving into laughter.

The elf shakes his head. "Do not tempt me, or I promise you I will take you up on your implied offer, and we will make do without any of the furniture," he responds, rather dryly at that.

But the look he gives her makes Margo's legs turn to water, and generally bodes poorly for her continued commitment to remaining vertical. She closes her eyes, to at least get him out of her visual field, which would make for one less irritant to her already overloaded nervous system. Warm and fuzzies - and assorted implications - begone.

She hears him sigh, and she can almost feel the shift in his mood.

"Oh, ma'nas. This…" There is a long pause. "Distraction. It is ill-conceived. You have a battle ahead of you. I have taken up too much of your time and attention."

She opens her eyes, and meets his now shuttered gaze. All the laughter drains out of her, and the expression she returns is guarded. The 'distraction' track seems to be habitual for him, and Margo suddenly has to wrestle with the certainty that at its end lies the sight of him walking away. And whatever iatrogenic effects this will have on her heart at this point. A question she is not at all ready to consider.

"And there will be battles after this one, all of them with an uncertain outcome for any of us. A distraction by any other name is whatever semblance of a life one can scrape together in the middle of this shitshow." She pauses, steeling herself for the next part of her question, because, in the end, she is not at all certain what his answer might be. She did not anticipate ending up at this particular juncture - not here, not now - but there's no helping what's done. Fate isn't a dog, you can't beat it away with a stick, as Baba would have it. "Would you begrudge me that? Or yourself?"

She watches the echoes of his usual internal conflict play out in his eyes, and then his gaze softens. But his face retains the hard edges of whatever mask he choses to hide himself behind. "I… am uncertain," he finally offers, and looks away. "Would you permit me to revisit this question at a later time?"

She nods, her heart constricting painfully, but she forces her face into a neutral expression. "Sure. I suppose there are Templars to deal with first..."

He gives her a long look, and she wonders if he is about to add something.

"Please do be carefu,l" he finally murmurs.

She nods. "And you."

And before she can say goodbye, she is jolted out of the Fade.

"Good nap, Outworlder?" Amund asks, and Margo is pretty sure the Avvar's eyes are crinkled in amusement.

From the top of the cliff, the camp is hardly visible. Above them, the sky is a velvety black, and the unfamiliar clusters of stars look like tiny holes punctured in a thick black veil.

The lone sentry walking around with his torch, in commendably predictable intervals of about ten minutes, is the only source of illumination. From his oscillatory ambling, Margo gets the layout of the camp: a few tents, mostly lining the edge of the ravine, some supply crates and other military miscelanea sheltered under an overhang. Bedrolls clustering around a campfire, probably for the grunts - she guesses the higher-ups get the tents.

It's not that different from any of the camps she'd stayed in so far, and the parallels weigh on her.

They crawl, as quietly as they can, in the sparse shrubbery at the top of the rocky plateau. Margo nestles a bomb into a shallow indentation between two rocks, right at the edge of the cliff. The little pocket hugs the bottom of the pot securely enough that it wouldn't tumble down on its own, but wouldn't require much more than a gentle push.

There are six bombs in total, and they set them strategically, Harding squinting into the darkness and then indicating where the pots ought to go. When the sentry is at the far side of his perimeter, they move, steps light, mindful not to dislodge any pebbles. It's like one of those "freeze" games that children play, except with explosives.

By the time the bombs are in place, a moon, entirely too large by Earth standards, creeps up from behind the mountain range, fat, tawny, and bisected by some kind of geological formation that appears to be a giant chasm. Margo squints at it, brow furrowed, trying to figure out how a moon could possible be so large. Until seeing it, the idea that she is, in fact, on a different planet somehow hadn't crossed her mind.

She shoves the thought firmly under the proverbial rug, again. Maybe all those unwilling thoughts can form a committee.

They climb down in silence, the last stretch requiring some rudimentary rappel, and Margo clings to the rope, grateful that she is able to execute the maneuver through sheer upper-body strength, since they're not harnessed in.

She plops down next to Dorian, who is leaning his back against the rock face, and tracing some kind of sigil in the dust with the tip of his staff. Sera, on the other side of the small platform where they've set up an intermediary relay point, is perched on a boulder - in a pose vaguely reminiscent of those gargoyles you find at the top of medieval cathedrals and overpriced New York City condos. She is refletching an arrow.

"Still nothing?" Harding asks quietly, and the other two shake their heads.

She turns to Margo.

"Are you certain your information is reliable? We have nothing else to go on."

Margo shrugs.

"Yes. Unless something else holds them up, they will arrive by morning." She sighs. "We might as well start."

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by lichen, which are in fact symbiotic combinations of algae and multiple species of fungus. Several types are used in traditional medicines, though not frequently in the European tradition of herbalism. Lichen that are valued medicinally contain usnic acid and atranorin, which can act as antibiotic mimics. It was also brought to you by Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit , which is what Margo is humming when she's about to ingest the aforementioned lichen.

Next up: Skirmish


	32. Chapter 32: Combustion

In which Margo deploys some pyrotechnics.

 **Content warning: canon-typical violence**

* * *

Stomach pressed against the rough limestone surface at the far edge of the cliff, Margo waits. Even with the moon out, the rest of her patrol have melted into the shadows at the clifftop, and the faint illumination doesn't reach into the ravine at all. Some twenty feet beneath her, the sentry does another circle, the clatter of his armor drifting up to her hiding spot. He pauses. In the glow of the torch he carries, she sees him shuffle in place, boredom and sleepiness making his movements sluggish.

A soft bird call cuts through the velvety darkness, like an owl's hoot, coming from somewhere to her left. Unless it's an actual fucking owl, which just happened to decide to hoot in the Theodosian version of Morse code, it's her cue. So she waits for another few seconds, and then the return call comes. This time, it's a crow's caw. Hopefully, the local birds aren't having a midnight chat – just your neighborly avian exchange. "Hello neighbor, how about them mice?"

She had better get this show on the road.

Margo extracts the "match" that Harding gave her: a shard of crumbly red mineral attached to a stick by some kind of stone-like resin, and which the scout had referred to, in a very helpfully descriptive fashion, as a "fire crystal." Ok.

"Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb ?" she mouths quietly, because Pink Floyd is better than an anxiety attack. Sure, they will. There it goes.

She strikes the crystal to the rock, and as it flares to life, sudden heat scalding her fingers, she brings it to the wick protruding from the kimchi pot _qua_ weapon of mass destruction. The end of the cloth catches. Three, two, one.

She pushes it.

The pot tumbles down the cliffside, and for a second Margo's stomach drops, because she can almost feel herself tumbling alongside it, as if the bomb has somehow become an extension of her own body. And then her stomach drops further still, because what if the wick goes out?

There is a massive detonation, heat and light flaring from the ravine, the blast blowing stray strands of hair back from her face in the shockwave. A man screams… and screams, and screams, the sound horrible. The explosion must have hit the sentry. Margo grits her teeth against the sudden smell of pungent, oily smoke; hot metal; and the whiff of charred meat.

"Mother, do you think they'll like this song ?" She forces the lyrics out between clenched teeth. Better clenched than chattering. No, they won't like it one bit.

At this point, the camp bursts to life like one of those wasp nests she and Jake would stupidly poke with a stick when they were kids – and then run for cover.

Margo springs to her feet — because if ever there were a bad time to introspect over one's childhood — and quickly sets off in the direction of the next bomb, wedged into a crevice about fifteen paces from here. She can't see what the others are doing, but she can hear shouts. And then, as if her ear suddenly tunes into it, the whistle of arrows and the thwack of a bowstring, pulled and released at incredible speed, one every few seconds.

Ten more paces. More shouts from below.

A cry, gurgling, and then rasping, and she sees in her mind's eye an arrow piercing a trachea. Hopefully not one of theirs.

Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls? They generally do, don't they?

Five paces.

"There! By the cliff! Get that warrior!" someone bellows from below. A roar, the sound bestial and a little demented — she decides it's Bull's battle cry.

Metal clanking against metal with a thick, echoing resonance that reverbs through her teeth.

Zero.

Margo falls to her knees by the bomb and peers down, over the edge of the cliff. Shadows dance and wobble below, like some medieval fantasy of Hell. There, right by that tent. She just needs to angle the projectile to hit the ground in front of those two Templars standing at the ready, guarding the tent's entrance. Archers, apparently, and they're both drawing their bows and aiming into the semi-darkness. Maybe there's something valuable in that tent; better not burn the whole thing down.

She waits for the bird call. Another crow's caw, and she's hitting her match — first against the ground, but it's too dusty, and the crystal doesn't catch. She switches tactics and uses the rough clay flank of the pot. The crystal flares, and she brings it to the wick. She picks up the bomb, because the only way to do this is to toss it. It's heavy, but she can lob it if she uses both hands. Ah fuck, she's probably going to blow herself up in the long run.

Three, two…

She hurls the pot and crouches at the edge of the cliff, watching the pot's parabolic tumble. One of the Templars hears a noise and looks up. Too late for him. He still manages to yell _"Clifftop"_ before the flames engulf him.

Mother, should I build the wall?

Margo moves. An arrow whistles behind her, close enough for her to feel the gust of displaced air on her nape.

Ten paces.

A flare of purple — straight ahead along the cliff's edge — silhouettes a man twirling a staff. She can feel the spell building before it hits below, and its echo twists her stomach in irrational, primordial horror. It tugs at something deep and atavistic, straight out of childhood nightmares — the cold, slimy, incomprehensible monstrosity staring at you in alien malevolence from the ceiling, when the lights are off and your Baba has gone to sleep. You know it's there, and it knows you know it's there, and it's just biding its time before it scuttles down.

A curse, someone else screaming in terror. Then the scream stops abruptly.

Mama's gonna make all your nightmares come true . She's skipping around, but her mind is too much of a jumble, conjuring word scraps by association.

Five paces.

Another arrow hits a rock in front of her, and she jumps over. Keep moving.

Zero.

She drops to the ground. It's dark here, so she has to feel for the pot. There. Right by that boulder, a flap of white — the wick. She peeks over the edge. There's a group of three Templars, looking in their heavy armor like the bastard children of an icebreaker ship and a pressure cooker. They're slowly advancing on the Iron Bull, who stands at the ready in a wide stance, claymore glinting uninvitingly in the flickering light. And then, suddenly, a hulking blue shadow materializes at the Templars' right flank. Margo catches the glinting arc of something that looks, for a split second, like a stylized wolf's head, coming down at incredible speed, and then one of the templars collapses to his knees, his helmet halved in size like a crushed soda can. Blood sprays in a horizontal fan from the deformed eye slit, the liquid black in the glow of the fires.

She hesitates. There's nothing this bomb can add to the current arrangement.

Another flare of purple, the reverb of sticky horror, and a hail of arrows, flying both ways. Each time Dorian casts, he becomes a target.

Margo forces herself to stop and think. Her main role is to make sure none of the Templars are able to retreat downhill. And the task of the others is to make them want to retreat downhill. She peeks over, trying to assess the battlefield.

There, in the bushes by the ravine, three figures. One, she recognizes as Asher — she would have thought he'd be a rogue, but no. Sword and shield for that one. One of his opponents is an archer — the one who's fallen back — the other one is a close and personal type.

Can The Specimen hold his own against the Templars? Or does he need help? Can Dorian keep casting, or is it just a matter of time before an arrow finds him? Can Amund and Bull best their opponents? And what it all boils down to, in the end, is whether the augur's auguring is accurate and whether the battle will turn against them. And if so, when . Because right now, by all appearances, they've got the upper hand.

Margo freezes in the clutches of indecision. What will be the effect of her intervention, should she take it upon herself to preemptively deviate from the plan? Is she going to make things worse? Think, she tells herself fiercely. Think. Rationally speaking, as far as large explosive devices are concerned, there is no such thing as friendly fire. Fire, by and large, is an equal opportunity unfriendly sort of thing, and it's not like her team has any special immunity to combustion, as far as she knows.

Right. Hem in the Templars. All other things being equal, better stick with the plan.

She grabs the bomb and begins to make her way towards the part of the cliff that overlooks the camp's entrance. The remaining three bombs are stashed behind a boulder, about ten paces away from where her original pickling jar of doom took flight and roasted that poor bastard on sentry duty.

An arrow grazes her shoulder, white hot pain flaring and making her almost drop the pot, but it flies on by. "Just a scratch" sounds all well and good, except it still smarts like hell. She stumbles but catches herself, redoubling speed. She'll get the elfroot potion when she makes it to her destination.

There are shouts from below, and she thinks she hears someone bark "regroup" and "down," but she's not entirely sure, because at that same moment a horn wails in the distance. She has no way of assessing how far it is, but generally speaking, horns are used as signaling systems of some sort, aren't they?

But then, her attention is drawn back down. The rattle of metal hitting metal gets closer.

Almost there.

Margo dives behind the boulder where the other three bombs are hidden. That, and the vial of tar jello that Amund had made her take with her, just in case, even after Sera and Harding categorically refused to put it on their arrows. "What even is that shite?" Sera had asked, and Margo couldn't do anything but shrug, because Amund still didn't disclose what the formula was for.

Clutching the fourth pot, she creeps to the edge of the cliff. The burning below creates an advantage, the fire's glare plunging the top of the rock face into comparatively deeper darkness.

There is a quartet of Templars retreating in formation towards the mouth of the camp, where the barricades designed to keep intruders out might give them some cover. Their shields are raised against Harding and Sera's arrows. The archer splits from the group and makes a run for the closest barricade. Right, you fucker. Come a little closer. Margo lights the wick. Three, two, one...

The bomb hits the wooden hedgehog, and everything bursts into flames, including the archer. Well, then.

Margo crawls back, and she shuts her eyes against the sight of grizzly death, a wave of nausea hitting her. The sound of the skirmish is a blur in her ears, and the seconds stretch into minutes, minutes stretch into it's over, Margo has no idea how much time passed. She pinches the inside of her wrist to break through the catatonic torpor that threatens to settle over her like a heavy, numbing shroud.

"All clear!" The Bull's voice carries from below like the sound of a gong. "You guys can rappel down."

Did they not hear the horn? It's possible the sound doesn't carry in the same way to the bottom of the ravine. Margo forces herself to her feet, and walks cautiously along the cliff's edge, trying to peer into the darkness down the road from the camp. The moon disappeared behind a cloud, and it feels like the night is absolute — thick and black as soot. The ghostly outline of flames — a green imprint fading to red on her retina — dances in front of her vision, and she blinks a few times to try to clear it.

And then, finally, she sees them. They're little more than flickering shadows moving up the mountain road, but Margo catches the sputter of a torch being extinguished in haste. And then her eyes adjust, and the cloud drifts on. The moon's tawny light bounces off the metal of their armor. There are at least six of them, maybe more if they have sneaky stabby types stalking the perimeter.

"Templars incoming!" Margo yells. "Six at least, about two hundred and fifty paces away!"

Curses from below, all three in different languages, and not a single one of them in Common. Still, she need not be a linguist to derive the general gist.

Harding and Dorian have rejoined the others, but Sera's nowhere in sight. Bull, Asher, and Amund are already dragging what remains of the barricades deeper into camp and away from the flames. She watches the mage and the scout confer quickly then take off in opposite directions as they look for elevated spots to occupy.

And then, as if in response to Margo's unspoken query, Sera materializes alongside her.

"Frig, right? Where's the rest of the tin-headed pillocks?"

Margo, with a sigh of relief that at least she's not going to be alone with the bomb tossing, points towards the road.

"Shite. That's quite a few of 'em." Sera cuts Margo a quick look. "I'm not low -low on arrows, but I am low- ish . But we got bombs, yeah?"

"Three left," Margo answers.

Sera nods.

"That's not half bad. Can take out at least the first couple of blighters, 'specially if we do it all sneaky-like."

Right. Sneaky-like will work for the first bomb. After that, it's going to be bluff and luck all the way through.

Margo huddles down with her pot, match at the ready. Beneath them, the others have taken up positions. She can spot all of them from her vantage point, but from the road, it's quite possible they're well hidden. The Templar patrol might not know how many they're up against.

All right. Now would be the time to follow Amund's recommendations.

She leaves the pot, crawls back behind the boulder with the other bombs, and picks up the mysterious tar potion. She dribbles some of it on her daggers and quickly turns away with a muffled curse. It smells like a combination of rotten eggs and roadkill. The stench alone is a lethal weapon.

"I'm not putting that on my arrows. Just so we're clear."

But Margo doesn't get a chance to respond. Below them, she can hear the fall of footsteps — quiet, but definitely close. Clearly, Sera hears it too, because she tenses and leans forward, bow turned horizontal as she readies the shot.

Margo sheaths the daggers — the leather will stink for weeks, no doubt, not that this will matter to her if they don't make it out of this — and crawls back to the ledge. The pottery of mass destruction is right there, ready to be deployed.

She watches as the first figure steps into the flickering light of the smoldering barricade. She readies the match. No point wasting the bomb on the single asshole. Maybe his friends will want to join in.

The Templar raises a fist, apparently signaling to his buddies to exercise caution.

Behind her, Margo hears a sharp twang, and an arrow whistles by. It might have even flown true, right into the strip of exposed flesh at the Templar's neck, if he hadn't chosen this exact moment to bend down and examine the dead sentry at his feet. The arrow flies over him and into the ravine.

"Shite," Sera mutters, and Margo hears the creak of her bow being readied for the next shot.

The Templar group explodes into motion, fanning out and no longer all that concerned about stealth. This, though, works in Margo's favor. She lights the wick, counts, and tosses the bomb, right between two figures running towards the barricade.

The pot tumbles, bounces off the cliff's edge, and then just plops down, breaks apart, and utterly fails to explode. The two templars jump away from it and then kind of stare at it in consternation, before they start moving briskly past the barricades. Margo can't tell whether they were splashed with the flammable mixture or not.

A flicker of purple catches her attention, and then Dorian's horror spell hits, but one of the Templars motions with his arms, the gesture somewhere between a shoulder stretch and a "the fish was this big " kind of number, and a golden circle explodes away from him, like a wave of sparkling static. Judging by the absence of terrified screams, and by the total lack of magical echo, the Templar's trick annuls the casting.

Shit. Right. Fire.

Margo turns towards the boulder again and picks up the next bomb — after this one, they're down to one.

Wick. Three, two, one. Please be a good bomb.

She throws it.

This one has the decency to explode, and it then dominoes the spilled extract into a wall of flame that cuts off the two templars in the front from the contingent of five — no, six, there's the sneaky archer stalking in the shadows — in the back.

The Templars on the outside of the wall of fire retreat a bit.

Arrows whistle.

A metallic clanking draws her attention, and she twists in time to see the figure emerge from the bushes at the top of the plateau, some ten paces from where she and Sera are hauled up.

The Templar is huge . Three hundred pounds of metal and muscle and murderous intent, if his drawn sword is any indication.

"Keep the tin-plated pissbag off me, yeah?" Sera calls out, as she focuses her arrows on the enemies below.

Right. Going toe-to-toe with a Templar. No biggie. Margo might survive this for — oh, two minutes?

"Well, look at this!" the Templar quips, the sound of his voice muffled by his helmet. "Pretty little knife-ears. Must be my lucky day."

Margo unsheathes her daggers, the smell of the coating still nauseating. That doesn't seem to discourage the Templar one bit.

"Maybe I'll keep you for dessert. How does that sound?"

"Like a bucket trying to make a funny, you shitgoblin," Margo responds dryly.

The bastard's wearing a full set of plate mail. She has no idea where to even start — if she'll be able to get that close in the first place, considering the much longer reach of his sword compared to her knives. This is sort of like trying to shuck an oyster with a nail file — with the caveat that the oyster outweighs you by two hundred pounds, is armed to the teeth, and seems intent on shucking you right back.

The Templar decides not to engage in further repartee. He lunges at her, and Margo scrambles out of the way of the blade and to the right. She barely manages to avoid a shield bash — apparently the lunge was intended to send her into the shield's trajectory, which makes her conclude that the murderous mollusk really is trying to keep her for later, rather than just killing her on sight.

She circles, and he pivots with her, laughter resonating from inside the metal encasement. Right. Overconfident lecherous asshole with no peripheral vision. She can work with that.

He lunges again, and this time Margo is prepared and sidesteps to the left.

"Gonna make me chase you, little girl?"

He doesn't even sound winded. Maybe she can tire him out, but it'll take some doing.

Apparently, the first few attacks were just foreplay, because suddenly, the mollusk gets serious, and it takes all of Margo's concentration to dodge the incoming blows. For a mountain of steel, he is fast.

Think. Fucking think, she tells herself, barely managing to block a pommel strike aimed at her head, the impact against her crossed daggers rattling her teeth and reverberating down her arms.

And then, suddenly, the wind is knocked out of her, a sharp pain spearing her in the ribs. She doubles over from the blow, vaguely cognizant through the searing pain that the fucker used the pommel strike to force her to open up, the better to drive the edge of his shield into her side.

She gasps for air, her lungs screaming as if she's drowning, but manages to roll out of the way of the templar's boot aimed at her throat.

An arrow glances off his helmet, and that shifts his attention for a second, enough for Margo to get back to her feet.

She's not going to get another chance like this.

She moves low and jabs with her dagger, praying to every singly deity known and unknown to man — and really, to whomever or whatever might be listening — that Amund's concoction is a fast poison. And to her complete and utter surprise, her strike finds its target, and the knife slides right between the metal plates where the Templar's knee joint articulates.

"Bitch!" he roars, and he lunges with a stumble, the tip of his sword whistling mere inches from Margo's face.

"A little help here," she hears Sera yell, but the sound is muffled, Margo's ears suddenly stuffed full of cotton wool.

She feels the spell before it hits — a trickle of dread in the back of her mind — and then a sudden pocket of darkness encases her and snaps closed, a suffocating sack of absolute, mindless terror. Her vision goes blank. Then, as if oozing into being out of the amorphous nothingness, something fanged, vaguely lupine, and thoroughly vile leaps for her throat. Margo screams, her heart racing so fast she thinks it's going to break out of her chest, and then the thing's teeth rend her skin.

The pain is utterly blinding. She screams again.

And then gets pissed off. Fuck this. Wolves? Seriously? That's the best the sticky horror can do? This is absolutely not an acceptable form of reality , she decides. Insulting, really.

The thought triggers something in her mind — and it's exactly like forcing herself awake from a bad dream — back when dreams didn't involve the Fade.

The mirage crumbles apart.

She's on the ground, but apparently so is the Templar. He's writhing in the dust and sobbing, shielding his head with his arms, and blabbering something about, of all things, fruit tarts. Margo grabs the dagger she let drop, covers the distance to the prone shape, aims, and drives the knife into the eye slit with all her force. Right. No such thing as a clean fight.

The body twitches for a while after that. When she's reasonably sure he's not getting back up, Margo hobbles over to Sera and ducks back behind the boulder. Her ribs scream with each movement. She fumbles for an elfroot potion and drinks it in one swallow.

"How are we doing?" she finally asks.

"We're not doing shite, is how. They're all hauled up behind the blockage, ours are, too, and at this point it's just trading arrows. And now I'm low -low." Sera extracts another arrow from her quiver and contemplates it thoughtfully. "I think they're just waiting us out. Probably have more buddies coming. Frigging frig, 'cause I really need to piss."

Margo harrumphs despite herself. The moon has vanished, the sky turning a translucent pre-dawn blue. A narrow strip of pink hugs the horizon. But, of course, just because it's edging towards morning doesn't mean Evie's team is magically coming to the rescue. What it does mean is that Margo's party will soon lose whatever advantage darkness provided.

Margo considers the last kimchi pot at her feet and then crawls to the ledge. She peeks out and quickly retreats. The Templars are settled behind barricades, none of them within reachable distance of whatever pottery of doom she might hurl.

She doesn't know whether the others are biding their time because they're waiting for reinforcements, because there's no way to take out the remaining templars without heavy losses, or because some are injured. Or plain old exhausted. Or a combination of all four. She's only been in fast skirmishes before — never something that stretches into a stalemate.

Which, come to think of it, is probably what most wars are like. Lots of waiting. Anxious boredom. Physical exhaustion. Bladder woes. And dysentery.

She crawls back to the boulder.

In the distance, another horn rings out, and Margo freezes. Ah shit. Based on the optimistic hoots from below, that's more Templars.

"We're sitting nugs," Sera whispers loudly. "We need to give ours a chance to break out before the rest of the tin-heads show up."

Margo tries to force her thoughts into a semblance of coherence despite the sudden tide of exhaustion. The adrenaline crash is fogging her mind and dulling the edges, as if she's looking at the world through a thick pane of frosted glass.

"We got more blowy shite, so it's all good, innit?"

Margo shakes her head.

"We're going to need something more than just blowy shite." She meets Sera's eyes in the semi-darkness. "You want to try an alchemical experiment?"

Sera's eyebrows draw together.

"Friggin' no, I don't." She points her thumb over her shoulder. "But I bet the tin-heads down there won't mind."

Fair enough. What did Amund say? It's a gamble?

Margo nods. So. Logically speaking… She pinches the bridge of her nose, urging her mind to get with the program.

Logically speaking, the lichen appears to open a stronger connection to the Fade. Her own latest dreaming seems to bear witness to that. And it should account for the difference between her reaction to Dorian's spell and the Templar's reaction to the same conditions. She was up and running while buckethead was still blabbering on about fruit tarts, despite their massive weight difference. From empirical evidence gathered so far, the jello works when it gets into the bloodstream. But they don't have that option, because armored mollusks... And shrapnel, even if she had materials to make it, is not going to be enough against plate armor...

But. Margo waves a finger in the air, at no one in particular. Blood lotus, in addition to being an accelerant, doubles as a hallucinogenic. What was Auntie's story about blood lotus and Orlesian nobles? Something about fumes and taking a bite out of statues?

Fumes.

She exhales through her teeth with another mental prayer to an unspecified addressee, fishes for the vial of tar jello, and pours its contents into the remaining bomb. It's probably not as good as using it as a coating, but whatever chemical reaction happened to it overnight, it's already over, its properties stable. Hopefully. Now it's a matter of stretching the concoction. And of a proper carrier for it.

If she dies, she'll haunt the Avvar to the end of his days, out of sheer spiteful malice.

Fuck it. Let's gamble.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by a public service announcement. Use your kimchi pots for pickling kimchi. Blowing up Templars with experimental alchemical extracts in this way is not economically sound. It is better done with less expensive pottery.

Next up: Alchemical shenanigans, reinforcements (for better or for worse, and probably for worse), and reunions.


	33. Chapter 33: Scattered

In which our heroes prevail, and Dorian makes a most interesting discovery.

* * *

If you had asked Margo beforehand what would be likely to decide the course of a battle, a pen would not have made the top ten. She shakes her head at the irony of it — because, of course, for a historian, however irrelevant her old career path is to her life now, it should have been the first guess. Of course, pens decide the course of battles. And wars. And everything else besides.

She extracts Auntie's compendium out of the inner pocket of her coat. She hates tearing pages out of the book — the damn thing feels more like a talisman than a botanical treatise at this point, and she is absolutely loath to desecrate it. But necessity being the mother of invention — along with all sorts of other ethically squishy progeny — she locates a relatively empty page towards the beginning of the volume. It's the one with the sigil of the printing house, and she supposes that tearing out the Theodosian equivalent of the copyright is as close as she'll get to turning this otherwise mildly sacrilegious act into a subversive one.

Still. She needs a pen.

"Sera? Do you have something to write with?"

The elf looks at Margo like she's sprouted horns. "What in the Void would I want with that? You trying to write the tin-heads a love note?"

Right. She supposes it would have been a tad too convenient. Margo looks around, and locates an appropriate wooden splinter on the ground. She uses one of her knives to sharpen its end to a point.

"A love note to Dorian, actually." At Sera's cocked eyebrow, she nods. "I need to get him to lend a hand without the Templars finding out. Could you shoot it over to him?"

Sera's eyes twinkle with amused recognition. "Maaaaybe. Proper Red Jenny trick, that."

Margo uses the match to blacken her makeshift writing utensil. "Pen" and paper in hand, she concentrates, trying to decide what to write. At least the orthography of Common matches standard modern English — which, come to think of it, is a truly bizarre case of linguistic convergence — but she still feels a brief wave of relief at not needing to add silent vowels everywhere.

At my signal... At my signal what, exactly? She needs to vaporize the compound, without letting it combust. It is possible that the smoke would have similar psychotropic effects, but she isn't willing to take the risk, in case oxidation changes the formula's properties too drastically. So diffuse it, without letting it all burn out. The timing will have to be just right.

And she needs water.

At my signal, make it rain? Margo harrumphs, as she imagines Dorian conjuring twirling banknotes over a crowd of gyrating Templars. No.

Maybe she should send the message to Amund — who knows, perhaps controlling the weather is part of his repertoire.

She frowns in hesitation. This truly is a gamble. Especially because she is entirely unsure about what constitutes Dorian's particular skill set, aside from the thoroughly unenjoyable and equal opportunity horror spell. Unlike the Orlesian Ice Queen and her magic, Dorian hasn't cast anything remotely water-based that Margo has seen.

Well. If they're lucky, perhaps the fellow has something unusual up his sleeve.

Decision made, Margo puts her pen to the paper. By all appearances, Dorian is a smart cookie. Which is to say, she doesn't need to simplify too much. The more of an explanation she can squeeze in, the more Dorian will be likely to improvise in the right direction.

Except that writing a lengthy explanation with a piece of blackened wood is not a trivial proposition. With each letter, the writing stick squeaks against the paper, the sound setting Margo's teeth on edge and sending goosebumps down her forearms. She hates that noise. She has to re-blacken the splinter twice before she gets to the end of her missive. Her scribbles are ugly, but legible.

"Need steam to poison Templars. Can you douse flames with water after blast? Hit with scary spell after. -M. "

So much for not simplifying.

Task completed — and none too soon — she hands the piece of paper to Sera, who plucks it, rolls it around the arrow shaft in a practiced motion, and then yanks a red thread out of her fraying tunic to secure the note.

"We should write more messages! Wait, this'll be brilliant! We tell Bull to flash his arse at the tin-heads. While they're all gaping, we jump down and steal their breeches. Then they're all running with their junk bobbing around. And then we set them on fire!"

Margo chuckles. "If my strategy doesn't work out, we'll try yours next."

"No friggin' way. Let's kill the tinned pillocks — tillocks? Tinlocks? Tillicocks? Anyway, let's just kill them now and go. I'm starving. And I need to piss something fierce."

Satisfied with this conclusion, Sera draws her bow, aims, and releases the arrow in the general direction of Dorian's last known location. Margo cranes her neck to steal a glance from behind their stone shelter. A few responding arrows fly by, but they seem pro forma. Margo is fairly certain the Templars are now firmly ensconced in place, waiting for the cavalry to arrive and wipe her team out once and for all.

This better work.

They wait. And wait, and wait. Margo fidgets. What if Dorian is injured or otherwise incapacitated? Or is out of magica and unable to fulfill her request? Or simply has no such spell in his toolbox?

An arrow embeds itself in the ground, about two feet away from where Sera is sitting. The elf grabs it, detaches the rolled up note, hands it to Margo, and jams the arrow into her quiver.

"Scout Harding's got some nice fletchings," she muses appreciatively.

Margo unfolds the strip of cream-colored parchment. It figures that Dorian would carry ink and paper with him. The note is written in an elegant cursive scrawl.

"As it so happens, I do have the solution to your problem.

I am, after all, indispensable.

-D.

PS: What a delightfully terse epistle, by the way! Very efficient. I should try my hand at dropping articles."

Margo nods. "We're on," she says to Sera, who gives her a lopsided smirk.

All right, then. The trick is to draw all the bastards as close to the blast as possible. She peeks over the ledge again, trying to assess the geometry of the Templar scatter. She would have to detonate the bomb in the middle of them. In theory, she doesn't even need to burn them, just expose them to the fumes.

It would be nice to not get herself killed in the process, but… well.

She turns to Sera again. On the very slim chance that she will not be dead by the end of this, Margo considers how to formulate her question without blowing her cover. From the scraps of interactions she's had with Sera, she's pretty sure the elf would not be particularly comfortable with Margo's potentially "abominable" status.

"I'm going to need to sneak up on them with the bomb," she says, her voice carefully modulated to a slightly sarcastic casualness. "I can't lob it from here and hit where it needs to hit without a catapult."

Sera nods with a smirk. "Grand! So you just shadow yourself over there, and I distract them."

Margo makes an abashed face. "There's just one problem," she says, hoping with everything she's got that Sera will fill in the blanks, and give Margo at least a hint of what Jan's shadow trick might have involved. Maile, after all, was a trained stealth fighter. Maybe her body remembers how to do it, even if Margo's mind doesn't know.

Sera's eyebrows draw together, but then she suddenly breaks into a wide grin. "Don't tell me you're out of showder?"

What in the hell is "showder"?

Apparently, Margo's expression is enough to convey her puzzlement, because Sera scrunches up her face in a mix of disapproval and amusement.

"You know. Showder. Shust? Shadow in a Bottle? The black glinty sprinkly shite? Pish. You probably have some stupid elfie name for it, don't you? And here I was beginning to think you're all right, not one of the annoying ones. 'Blah blah blah, Arlathan. Blah blah blah, we were great once. Blah blah, the Veil is itchy here.'"

Margo's eyes widen. Could she be so lucky? Is shadow walking caused by a substance ? "I am all out."

"Figures. You know the shite's expensive, right?" Sera shifts and fishes out a tiny vial of something that looks like a very thin, slightly sparkly black powder from her pocket. She hands it to Margo. "You owe me three ales, one brandy, a meal, and a game of truth or dare."

"Void in a sack, Sera," Margo mutters, with just a little twinge of surprise at how easily she adopted — and adapted — the local profanity. Then again, profanities are usually the first object of linguistic acquisition, along with "hello," "goodbye," and "where's the loo?" "You're worse than Varric."

She looks at the bomb and considers how to transport it. There's no way to climb down the sheer cliff, not without ropes, and not while lugging a giant pot. But then again the late buckethead did make it up here, and she doubts he did any rock-climbing in that armor.

"Sera, can you help me with applying the showder? I need to hide the pot too, and it'll be easier if someone else does the… sprinkling?" She hopes it's applied topically, not ingested.

"Oooh, 'applying .' Sure, I'll apply. " Sera chortles, and then takes the vial back. "Ready, yeah?"

Margo nods, and Sera uncorks the vial. The particles settle over her and the pot with a smell of lilacs and gunpowder. There is a strange, auditory component to the feel of it, voices whispering quietly just out of earshot. Margo looks down at her forearms, trying to ascertain the effects. It is as if the powder reflects light back, creating an illusion of absence — but it's more than that. Her eyes want to skid away, to find something else to land on. She wonders if the substance can be replicated. Probably not without some kind of magic.

Margo gets up, clutches the now largely invisible pot more tightly, and starts padding softly along the slope.

It takes her about five minutes to walk down the plateau — carefully avoiding tangling with bushes or tripping over rocks — but then, finally, she's at a place where she can easily jump down to the packed dry dirt of the mountain road. She looks around, but there aren't any signs of the other Templars. Either the next wave of reinforcements is held up somewhere, or they were just blowing the horn for shits and giggles.

She sneaks up the road. It's not the time for it, but her eyes are drawn to the sky overhead — a piercing, gorgeous lapis, shot through with the feathery gold of dawn clouds that catch the oblique rays of a sun on the cusp of emergence. Saying that it's a beautiful day to die is just the sort of sentimental cliche the celestial light show seems to be calling for, and Margo sticks her tongue out at the sky. Fuck you very much. She's not dying.

The first barricade comes into view, and she freezes. Two templars are sitting behind it. Their poses are in the "calm but alert" range. Further up the road, another pair behind another barricade, and then the last two behind a large boulder, in a kind of triangular pattern from each other. The one closest to her lifts his helmed head, looks right at her — and then through her. The helmet pivots, and he goes back to fiddling with an armor strap.

She could lob the bomb from here, but it would put her too close to the first pair of tin-heads. With a mental prayer, she walks softly past them. I'm just a little black rain cloud. Pay no attention to me. Right. Never a good sign when you devolve into singing Winnie the Pooh in your head.

An arrow whistles overhead and thwacks against the barricade, which draws the Templars' attention. Margo clenches her teeth and keeps going. The archer in front doesn't even bother retaliating, perhaps because he's conserving arrows. She spots a large boulder to her left, and she makes a beeline towards it. It's equidistant from the first and the third pair of tin-heads. Maybe she can use it to shield herself from the blast.

She's almost at her destination when she hears a shout behind her.

"Rogue! By the rockface!"

She takes off at a run, no longer caring for stealth. Behind her, armor clatters. An arrow ricochets off the stone with a burst of sparks. She pivots. One Templar is coming her way, sword drawn, but the others stay put. Right. No use in forsaking shelter on behalf of a single, lightly armored rogue. Another arrow thwacks her would-be assailant on the helmet and bounces off, slowing his progress for only a few seconds.

Margo raises her arms, chucks the bomb with all her might into the middle of the road, and dives behind the boulder.

The blast makes her ears ring, but she forces the accompanying scream into a word. "Now!" she yells, hoping that Dorian will interpret this as his signal. She draws her daggers, fingers feeling sticky and disobedient. The stink is awful, and mixing it with the acrid smoke does nothing to improve it.

Margo gets to her feet and turns around, half-expecting to come nose-to-nose with the Templar who had decided to come confront her. The fire is different from that of the regular bombs: more sluggish, cooler, and tinged purple. The Templar is on the ground — likely knocked over by the blast — but the others are all at the outer edges of the smoldering epicenter, swords drawn and frozen mid-motion.

And they are all looking up.

She follows their gazes and gapes. About ten feet above the blast radius, something amorphous hovers, and it takes Margo's overtaxed brain a seconds to process what it is. It is… a drop of water. Except it's the size of a minivan. The quivering mass of liquid is speckled with debris — algae, twirling sediment, and a very confused and disgruntled-looking fish.

And then the water remembers that it's meant to obey gravity, and it falls.

The ground sizzles, a thick, oily vapor billowing out in a suffocating cloud that stinks of sulphur, curdled blood, and rose petals. Margo gags, but before she has the chance to worry about her unsettled stomach, the horror spell hits.

The darkness sucks her in like quicksand, and she falls, directionless, into its roiling center. A blur of impressions assault her senses, too fast and too awful to process. Bodies rent apart. Faces contorted in agonized screams, black tongues lolling out like dead slugs over cracked lips, eyeballs rotting, pale larvae wriggling in the sockets.

She falls deeper, tangles further, flails.

Things brush against her insides, trying to morph her into their awful configuration. Eyes where mouths should be, and mouths where hands should be, and teeth where there shouldn't be any. She struggles, a silent scream on her lips, but she slips below, into another hellish circle. The awful things so close now, intimate, the living fabric of the landscape she's tearing through, except it's also her own tissues, her flesh, and bone, and gristle. Her mind strains to find a lexis, an interpretation, anything to hold on to, but it fails and slips.

Beings of light and shadow, torn asunder into multitudes of fragments, eviscerated of their own essence, split from themselves, and then split again, their very nature broken and spliced, haphazardly, as if by a madman, or a toddler, or some awful, senseless cataclysm.

She no longer has the energy to scream. She tumbles down and down, into a cosmic void where time itself means nothing but the eternal agony of a ghastly disarrangement. And at the very bottom of the thing that has no end, no beginning, no up or down, only the single direction of deeper into itself, Margo crashes against the truth, the thing that lurks beneath her world, on the ceiling at night, waiting to scuttle down and whisper into her ear its awful crooning lullaby.

You too, my Soul. A scattered sort of thing .

Margo never loses consciousness in the strict sense of the term, but she loses herself instead, tangled, and shattered, and recombined in awful, never ending multitudes. There is neither time, nor space, nor axes of coordinates. Nothing but a world of empty forms in permanent mutation.

Eons pass.

And then, slowly, pieces of her begin to coalesce together — but there isn't enough of her at first for that to matter. Self-awareness is the last thing to emerge. Slowly, a sense of self condenses, and the agony of it makes her scream, except the scream is little more than a choked croak at the back of her throat.

Once she remembers she has eyes — and where they are located — she tries to open them. Her eyelids feel like they're glued together.

Something cold sprinkles her face. Whatever it is, it makes her suddenly aware that she does, in fact, have a face — and that said face is probably part of a head, which, if she's really lucky, might still be attached to a body. She wipes at the cold droplets. Aha. Hands, accounted for.

She peels her eyes open, one, then the other.

The first thing that comes into focus is Dorian's mustache.

"Oh good! And here I thought you'd never wake up. I was even beginning to feel awful about it." He lifts a waterskin and tilts it to Margo's lips. She takes a sip and coughs spastically. "That was quite the performance you and I orchestrated. Sadly, I'm afraid you missed Act II. And Act III, which, if I may say so myself, was especially memorable."

"How long have I been out?" she asks.

"Half-a-day, give or take."

Half-a-day? Margo has only a very vague idea of how long or short that is, her entire sense of time anchorless.

"What did I miss, then?" she manages, although it sounds like she is trying to cough up a hairball.

Before he responds, Dorian loops his arm around Margo's shoulders and helps her tilt into a sitting position. Her ribs scream in protest. The world spins, comes off kilter, then snaps back into place.

"Do keep your head elevated. It will help with the disorientation." He hands her the waterskin, and she takes a few gulps before returning it.

She looks around. Apparently, they are seated in a tent. The air is thick with old sweat, metal, animal hide, and some kind of aromatic. Myrrh, maybe. The sun dapples the canvas overhead with the shifting shadows of leaves. A soft breeze worries at the flap of fabric that serves as the door.

"Let's see. What did you miss? Act II consisted of a very dashing attack by the heroes against their somewhat incapacitated foes. There was much sword swinging and head bashing. And spell casting, of course. Very gruesome. Blood everywhere. But there was also much babbling and erratic behavior on the part of the foes in question, which undoubtedly made our rapt audience of mountain goats and other wildlife wonder whether they were the spectators of a military epic or a comedy. In any event, our heroes acquitted themselves rather splendidly, only to be thwarted by a sudden and treacherous influx of villains. Which, my dear, brings us to Act III."

Margo blinks. "Did anyone get injured in Act II?"

Dorian gives her a dazzling smile. "Of course! We wouldn't wish for the suspense to fizzle, now would we? In fact, yours truly received a rather spectacular wound to his shoulder." He shows off a well-tanned and muscled deltoid, complete with a narrow slash of paler skin. "Healed, of course, just in time for the denouement."

Margo chuckles. "So, Act III?"

"Ah, yes. Act III did not disappoint. As our heroes teetered on the verge of being overwhelmed by enemy forces…" Dorian gestures with his hand, as if outlining an endless army of baddies, "who swept to the rescue but the Herald in the flesh with all her retinue?"

Margo nods cautiously. If she's here — and Dorian is cracking jokes about Evie's "intrepidness" — does this mean that the fight proceeded well?

"I take it the play had a happy ending?" Margo asks, not quite daring to hope that there's no bad news in store. Her heart beats heavily in her chest.

"By and large, a rather happy one." Dorian's gray eyes twinkle with humor. "Everyone is alive. Our delightful dwarven companion — Harding, that is, Varric is rather less with all his barbs — and the impressively burly Blackwall were both injured, but not overly severely. The Warden, I should add, insisted on carrying your lifeless body all the way up the hill, despite the rather grisly leg wound. Very obliging of him, I thought. Solas is caring for them in the next tent over. The Iron Bull insists that none of his injuries are serious, even though he bore a suspicious resemblance to a pin cushion by the end of it. The Seeker looks like she could use a long restful sojourn by the Nevarran seaside. And the Orlesian courtier only suffered minor damage to her wardrobe, which, as I understand it, is injury enough as far as she's concerned."

"And Evie?"

"Fine. I dare say the Herald even did well for herself." Dorian's eyes narrow speculatively, and an alarm bell starts chiming quietly at the back of Margo's mind. "Everyone else is alive and accounted for."

"So… How did you get stuck caring for me?" she asks.

"I volunteered, of course! I am, after all, the only specialist in the after-effects of necromancy spells."

"You are a necromancer ?" Margo squeaks. Whatever it might mean in Thedas, the first term her memory conjures up by association from some dusty back-drawer is "haruspicy." Because nothing predicts the future quite like a set of fresh entrails. Unless, of course, this is well and truly death magic, but with a practical application. Perhaps it involves controlling hordes of zombies? Handy trick, that.

"Actually, my focus is thaumaturgy. Hence my ability to displace some river water towards the location of your choice, as you no doubt recall. But yes. I do know a few spells from the much-reviled Nevarran specialty."

His expression turns from mildly sarcastic to speculative again.

"I should add that I had to shoo your shabbily dressed elven friend away repeatedly — very insistent, that one, in a quiet, unassuming sort of way. And of course, Evie, Varric, and Blackwall are all preoccupied with your condition. Not to mention your Avvar associate, who offered to prepare my body for an offering to his pagan gods should I suddenly perish. I am still unsure whether this was his way of telling me he liked me."

Margo chuckles. Speaking of putting the dead to good use. "I think that's a compliment, coming from him."

"Ah. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse. In any event, I promised Evelyn to inform her of your state as soon as you woke up. Which brings me to my main point." Dorian peers at her, again with that quizzical speculation in his eyes.

"What are you leading up to, Dorian?"

His lips quirk into a smile. He leans in, voice quiet. He smells pleasantly of myrrh and autumn leaves, and less pleasantly of something ferrous, like old blood.

"Do they know?" he whispers.

A shiver creeps down Margo's spine. Do they know what ? About Evie? Has he figured it out, somehow? But which part? The luck vortex? Or the botched Tranquility rite?

"Do they know what?" she asks, echoing his hushed tone.

"That you're… not quite what you seem?" he offers diplomatically.

Margo tries to hide the startled shudder, fear coiling in the pit of her stomach. "What do you mean? What do you think I am?" she asks, and congratulates herself on the words coming out evenly.

"Technically?" he asks.

She nods cautiously. "Dead," he says. "That is, your body died and came back to life at some point. At first I thought you were a spirit, you see, animating a dead body. My training suggested as much, even if your body seems perfectly alive now. The word "abomination" is so very loaded, of course, but for lack of another, more accurate term..." He becomes animated, an expression of irritable curiosity on his face. "Though I had never known an abomination to be amused by raunchy literature, so I reserved my judgement. But then I had a chance to examine you while you were under the thrall of the horror spell. You are most certainly not a spirit in any conventional sense of the term. In fact, my dear, I believe you to be human, of all things — or at least something like it, give or take a few pesky details — which, in my personal opinion, is a rather unlikely occurrence considering the general shape of your ears and what have you."

Margo is frozen in place, a chill locking her muscles in a painful clutch. She wants to bolt, but can't, the dread at being discovered literally rooting her to the damn bedroll.

"But that is not all of it! It would seem that you have some facility with wandering around in the Fade. And yet your body does not have an inkling of magic. None at all. How such a thing is possible, I do not know. Regardless, you went very deep into the spell. It took an impressive effort to retrieve you safely. I even counseled the elven mage against attempting to seek you out — quite the expert on the Fade, that one, I am given to understand — which, I fear, he has taken as a personal affront and a less than generous assessment of his skills."

"So how did you get me back?"

"I unraveled the spell, of course. From there, I suppose you wandered back on your own accord."

He spreads his hands and smiles at her — and Margo tries to process his expression, but despite the string of revelations, it remains warm. No, not warm. Rather delighted, like he's just discovered some new and fascinating phenomenon and is excited about the prospects of unlocking its mysteries. Which, she supposes, is not very far from the truth.

"So. Care to tell me who — or what — you are?"

Margo exhales slowly, trying to buy herself some time to think, but her thoughts are scattered and sluggish. "I think I went deep because I inhaled the toxin," she ventures. "I probably have some of Amund's lichen still in my system, so the effect was likely compounded."

"Yes, yes," Dorian waves off her words impatiently. "I know that, but in itself, this explanation is insufficient."

"Very well." She meets his gaze. She expects to find it wary, or guarded, but there is only genuine interest there. "I'm not exactly from Thedas."

"You're from beyond Thedas?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm from a different world altogether, Dorian."

He stares at her in stunned silence, and then claps his hands with a gleeful "ha!" and follows it up with a theatrical little number, where he brings his finger to his lips, and looks around furtively. He proceeds in a more hushed tone. "I knew it! Alexius and I theorized the possibility of multiple coexistent worlds years ago! But…" His eyes narrow at some new hitch in his model. "There still remains the problem of how. Could it be that the Mortalitasi were partially correct all along? The displacement theory has never been demonstrated experimentally. How could it? And certainly not with another departed soul. If this were proven, it would completely upturn several established theorems, you understand?"

Margo shakes her head. She does not, in fact, understand one bit. But Dorian appears to be neck-deep in a specialized academic argument with himself, and she knows better than to try to interfere with those.

"Forgive me, this is all very obtuse to someone who isn't a specialist, I'm sure. You see, the Nevarrans assume that the soul of the dead displaces a spirit when it passes through the Fade on its way to the Beyond. The Mortalitasi — let's ignore their political reputation for a minute — develop much of their magic from this premise. A displaced spirit can then be brought out of the Fade and into a specially prepared corpse, or so their beliefs suggest. Clearly, this is where the theory appears to diverge from practice, since you are, in fact, very much alive as far as I can tell. Was a spirit involved?"

Margo thinks, turning Dorian's model around in her head. The wrathful thing that passed her as she fell through the proverbial looking glass had also, presumably, killed — and perhaps briefly possessed — Maile. What had Amund said in the Avvar prison? Something about trading places with a mad god.

"I don't know for sure. I think I died in my world, and then was sucked into this one, into a body that died… simultaneously? And yes, there was a spirit." Margo pauses, uncomfortable. "Or, more likely, a demon." She clears her throat, not liking Dorian's suddenly tense expression. "But I think it went the other way, for what it's worth." She frowns. Is that thing still wandering around somewhere, wearing her body? Or did it die, or maybe get shot down by the authorities and taken to some secret government lab?

She's distracted from her thoughts of a hypothetical Area 51 by the alchemical connection she had previously failed to fully articulate to herself.

"Come to think of it, I believe the whole event might have been partially triggered by a plant toxin that somehow pulled me here. Apparently, through the Fade."

Dorian taps his chin in contemplation. "Fascinating. A three-way swap. Do you have the Fade where you come from?"

And then, of course, Margo is stunned into silence by a blinding flash of insight. Could it be that the Fade is, in fact, a truly universal phenomenon? And a collective one? Perhaps under some very specific conditions? And what would the implications of such a thing be?

Her mind churns with the possibilities. There are certainly plenty of stories in Earth's many mythologies that seek to account for the disappearance of magic from the world, usually as a matter of waning belief, but not always. Sometimes, it is stolen, typically by some trickster figure.

She shakes her head, more in consternation than in denial. Surely, there had never been a Fade in her world, or anything like it. She forces herself to return to the topic at hand. Dorian's question had been more specific. Does her world have the Fade?

"Not as such. And certainly no magic, at least not like it is here."

The mage's eyes widen. "Incredible! Then your translocation must have required an enormous amount of energy to execute. If you don't mind me asking, who were you back in your world? Perhaps the key lies there?"

Margo chuckles humorlessly. "A historian. I specialized in the history of botany."

Dorian offers her a dazzling smile. "A fellow researcher! I knew there was something I liked about you. And your name truly is Margo Duvalle, then?" He arranges himself into a more comfortable position, and steeples his fingers under his chin. "Your world must not be radically distinct from ours if the naming conventions run parallel."

She nods. "There are, in fact, many similarities."

"So. Who else knows? Cassandra? The Herald, surely?"

Margo shakes her head. "Amund. And Solas."

If he is surprised, he doesn't show it. "Ah, of course. That would explain… You know, it's funny, I had wondered about the elf's rather zealous interest in your well-being. I thought that perhaps he rather fancies you."

He winks. Margo schools her face into a mask of bland neutrality, but apparently she overdoes it with the bland. Dorian's eyes widen in surprise.

"He does fancy you! Or perhaps, rather, you fancy him? So the rather nondescript… what do you southerners call it? apostate… caught your eye? Or, forgive me. You're not, in fact, a southerner, are you?" His expression turns curious, and then speculative. "Wait a moment. How does this work? It's hard to assess when you look at a soul, but something about the aura made me think, human… Do you also have elves in your world?"

Margo squirms, but shakes her head. She supposes that "folklore" doesn't count. And it's not a bad question, when posed like that. How does it work?

"This question of cross-species attraction is such an intriguing one to me, you see. More so without any prior familiarity, yes? Is it the ears?" Margo feels a treacherous blush creep up her cheeks. Damn observant Vint naturally notices her predicament and chortles. "Now I really do wonder, is it mutual? What do you think he sees you as — a human? A spirit? An elf? How positively curious!"

Margo firmly diverts her mind from Dorian's speculations, and narrows her eyes at him. "Aren't we getting off track? You were interrogating me over my abominable nature."

"Abominable?" He shoos the term away like an annoying fly. "You, my dearest, are a scientific mystery! A most unlikely, miraculous proof of a very unpopular theory! Which happen to be my specialty, I'll have you know. As to 'interrogating,' it sounds so very crass, doesn't it? No, no — I prefer my research subjects to be willing and eager."

Another brilliant smile. Is he flirting with her? Or is he, in fact, announcing that he is planning to deploy her as a lab rat? If they're on the subject of fancying, she'd bet a good chunk of her meager and sporadic salary that the fellow is angling for a certain tall horned creature with a very large sword. Speaking of the mysteries of cross-species attraction.

So, lab rat seems more likely. "Are you going to tattle on me?"

"And risk you dragged to the stake by some overeager Chantry idiot? Perish the thought!" His expression turns sly. "But I do think we can be of mutual utility. Which, as I am sure you are aware, is the basis of all solid friendships." He sounds rather bitter when he says it.

"You don't seem to believe that."

"Very perceptive. As a matter of fact, I do not. And neither do many of my countrymen, despite what they like to profess."

"So…" Margo trails off. Some of the paralyzing fear has receded, but she remains wary. There are still innumerable ways this could go badly for her.

"Yes, 'so'." Dorian smiles. "I wasn't idly commenting on our fellow companions' concern for you. You seem to have managed to garner some influence — or, at least, some regard — which, I suspect, will only grow after our fortuitous victory over the errant Templars. We are the unlikely heroes of the hour, you and I."

"It was a team effort," Margo parries cautiously.

"Of course it was, but do not diminish our contribution. I cannot abide false modesty."

"Can you abide any modesty, Dorian?"

His laugh is warm and rich. "Of course not! A most vapid affectation if ever there was one."

Margo chuckles despite herself. It's hard not to like him. "So, what are you planning to do about your new… insights?"

"Oh, pester you with endless questions, for one. And, in exchange, impart my considerable knowledge of magic, politics, fine wine, salacious Tevinter literature, or any other important topic of mutual interest."

"Where's the other shoe?"

He frowns. "Shoe, my dear?"

"The one that's about to drop."

He chuckles again, and Margo is glad the expression translates to Common. "Well, not a shoe, really. A slipper, at the very most. I do have one favor to ask you." His face turns serious once again. "While you were sleeping, our fearless leaders have decided that they will seek out the support of the Templars. I believe in no small part as a result of this last battle, although it is beyond me to follow the particular acrobatics their logic must have executed to land on that conclusion." His brows are furrowed in worry. "That leaves the Redcliffe mages at the mercy of Alexius, and I, for one, am still committed to remedying that situation as best I can."

Margo waits for him to continue.

"Convince your Inquisition it is a worthy cause, will you? At least to send some surreptitious help. Perhaps we will be able to sneak some of the mages out from under Alexius's nose."

Margo frowns, the fear returning. One large shoe, coming right up. "Dorian, I have to ask. Is this blackmail? If I fail, will you reveal what you learned to the others?"

The mage's gaze turns steely. There is a long pause before he speaks.

"Despite what you might have heard, not all of my countrymen are duplicitous soulless bastards who worship nothing but their own power and who will stop at nothing in pursuit of their goals. So, no. My request does not have 'teeth,' if that is what you are concerned about. But if you cannot see the ethical value of helping the mages, then perhaps I have misjudged you."

Margo shakes her head. It's a sad state of affairs when she's more worried about his disapproval than his potential to blow her cover. "I know. I'm sorry, Dorian… I'm in an awkward situation, as you can imagine."

He nods, and waves the nascent apology away. "Accepted, forgotten. I have sprung this on you at an inopportune moment, but you must understand how crucial this is. The sort of magic I suspect has been unleashed in Redcliffe is highly unstable. Worse still, Alexius himself is unstable. I do not wish to see more innocents get caught in the crossfire between him and all the other power-hungry fools you have around here."

Margo nods. What else can she do? She'd try it even without the non-threat of blackmail.

"Splendid! And on that note, shall we emerge and receive our well-deserved accolades? Or, minimally, partake in whatever passes for the noonday meal?" Dorian's expression turns sly again. "I am sure a number of our companions are just dying of curiosity about what we might have been doing in this tent for all this time, what with all the giggling and hushed whispers. If you wind up accused of collusion with Tevinter magisters, I apologize in advance."

Margo smirks despite herself. Fine. Maybe this isn't the worst thing that could have happened. And it would be nice to have someone else with whom she can put her guard down. "If you're afraid of nationalist slander, we could put on a show for them instead. Want to make inappropriate noises? That'll confirm their stereotype of me, and deflect from their stereotype of you."

He feigns shock, but his eyes crinkle in amusement. "You have a very subversive streak, my dear. I think I like it. I suppose it might encourage some people to take an interest. Herd mentality and what have you. How convincing can you make it sound?"

She ignores the question, and cocks an eyebrow. "Certain horned people, then?"

Dorian makes a face. "Oh do not smirk, it's unbecoming. I am simply… intrigued. Regardless. Think of this little revelation as a peace offering of sorts, in the interest of our budding friendship. I did pry about your rather inexplicable taste in elven men, after all." He begins to straighten from his cross-legged position. "And on that note, I do not relish the idea of your performatively self-effacing elf needling me half to death with pointed political commentary — especially not in misplaced retaliation for diverting your presumably fickle favor. Though who could blame you? I am much better dressed." He winks, and Margo rolls her eyes. "In any case, perhaps let's not feed the beast, yes?"

Oh, she doesn't need another compulsive teaser to join Varric's ranks, on top of all the other complications. At this point the complications of her complications are having a whole new progeny of baby complications, scuttling every which way.

"He's not my anything, Dorian."

The mage chuckles. "Good. Stay away from the claims of ownership. Those never end well. Shall we?"

Margo nods, and she follows him out of the tent.

* * *

This chapter is brought to you by haruspicy, which is the practice of using the entrails (in particular the liver) of sacrificial animals to divine the future.

Next up: Counting crows and, as far as Margo's concerned, navigating tricky emotional waters.

As always, thank you all for reading and leaving your thoughts 3


	34. Chapter 34: Nevermore

**Chapter 34: Nevermore**

 _In which Evie talks heresy and makes a confession, and everyone else says rather less than they mean._

* * *

There are, indeed, accolades. The first one is from Varric, whom she spots seated on a crate by a small campfire.

"Oh-ho, Prickly! Now, there's a sight for sore eyes. Guess Asher owes me a sovereign. He wagered you wouldn't make it."

The dwarf throws his arms wide, and Margo walks over, vaguely ambivalent over whether the hug is an expression of genuine joy at her survival, or of equal pleasure at having won the bet. Or, more likely, both. She returns the dwarf's embrace, leaning down slightly. The stubble on his jaw scrapes against her cheek.

"Chat later," he says quietly into her ear. When she straightens from the hug, his face is hidden behind his usual sardonic mask, but his amber eyes are serious when they meet hers, and he tilts his head in a minute nod.

The next show of approval is from the Iron Bull, who strolls over to Margo and, before she can properly react, smacks her on the back with such force that she staggers under the impact.

"Well done, Blondie. Glad you made it. That little trick you and Dorian pulled was nice ." The skin around his eyes crinkles with a smile, and it's the first time in a while where Margo feels like there's no background agenda to his utterance. She also notices there is no ambiguous come-on — nothing there but a kind of uncomplicated soldierly camaraderie.

Bull's gaze flicks from her to the mage, and it lingers there for a few seconds.

"Not bad with the magic back there, Dorian."

"Yes. We Vints are good at that sort of thing." Margo casts a quick glance at him. Despite the sarcastic tone, there is the trace of a blush beneath his olive skin.

"Varric, got more cups?" Bull waves a flask over at the dwarf.

Varric examines an assortment of dishes laid out on a rag in front of him, no doubt pilfered from the late Templars. Who, no doubt, pilfered them from someone else.

"These ones look clean enough," Varric trails, and then she and Dorian are handed two silver-plated goblets, which Bull fills with a murky liquid. He tops off the dwarf's tin mug as well.

"Bottoms up," he instructs, gesturing with the flask.

Margo considers the wisdom of chugging what smells like pure ethanol on an empty stomach, but it's not like she's got much choice.

Dorian sniffs the liquid suspiciously.

"What's wrong, Dorian? Too strong for your taste? Want me to dilute it for you?"

"Since I doubt that diluting it would improve the gustatory properties of whatever this is, and it would only protract the unpleasantness, I think I'll just have to make do."

Bull nods approvingly. "Atta Vint. Now, drink up. To victory!"

Margo takes the shot, which burns all the way down and keeps on burning once settled.

"Where is everyone?" she asks, blinking tears from her eyes.

"Well, Prickly, while you were sleeping it off, our strange Avvar associate insisted that we needed to investigate what happened to the ravens." Varric gestures uphill. "The Seeker, Her Heraldship, and the Iron Lady went off with him, so they're somewhere up there counting crows."

Right. The mysteriously vanishing birds. She had almost forgotten about them. In the meantime, Varric continues.

"Buttercup's taking a nap — after she ate about half of our provisions. Hero and Freckles are in the infirmary tent over there with Chuckles. Gloomy is taking inventory."

Margo concludes that Freckles must be Scout Harding, and, by process of elimination, Hero is the Warden and Gloomy is Asher.

"You mean he's looting," Dorian quips.

"No, Sparkler. Looting is just grabbing things haphazardly and hoping you end up with something valuable. Taking inventory is all about writing reports about what to grab, what not to grab, what grabbed you back, and what is currently in demand in Orlais."

"Yeah. Looting's actually fun ," the Iron Bull interjects.

Margo sets her goblet next to Varric and winces at the sudden stab of pain in her ribs. It feels like something in her side has decided to rearrange itself into a pattern that is altogether unaccommodating to her internal organs. She supposes the elfroot potion is now out of her system. Apparently, it failed to fix all of the damage from the shield bash.

Varric's eyes narrow at her sharp inhalation. "Better stop by the infirmary and have Chuckles take a look at you, eh?"

Margo tries to determine whether the dwarf is about to embark on one of his bouts of mortifying double-entendres, but he just gives her a weirdly pointed look, returns his attention to his cup, sets it aside, and then extracts a well-worn deck of cards from his pocket.

"All right, you two. Wicked Grace? Or Diamondback?"

Margo leaves them to the cards and walks over towards the infirmary tent, trying to rein in the anxious fluttering in her stomach. She almost groans in frustration. Apparently, she can carry a bomb and detonate it not ten feet away from herself, survive the mother of all bad trips, and ingest random flora at the suggestion of a grumpy shaman-type with an incomprehensible cosmology and a penchant for language games, but this makes her nervous. Well, then. Maybe next time she can give swooning a shot.

The inside of the tent is sweltering hot, and the heatwave hits Margo as soon as she lifts the flap of fabric that serves as the door. She is greeted by the smell of elfroot, magic, and blood. She enters, and takes in her surroundings.

The heat is coming from a brazier full of coals, their incandescence apparently maintained by some kind of stone with a reddish inlay at the center.

The first thing she notices is Blackwall — although that is not technically accurate. The first thing she notices is a humanoid mountain of muscles, scar tissue, and hair that she then identifies as Blackwall. He sits on a bedroll, in nothing but a pair of homespun trousers of indeterminable color. One of his legs is heavily bandaged, the trousers split down a side seam to accommodate the bulky wrappings.

On another bedroll is Lace Harding, also in a state of partial undress, although her wound is in her shoulder.

And then, of course, she spots Solas. Margo blinks in mild consternation, because she suddenly realizes that, prior to this moment, she'd had only a very approximate idea of what his physique might look like under all those layers of tastefully neutral knits. He is down to a simple short-sleeve gray tunic, which rather helps solve some of that mystery. Margo gives herself a mental thwack. She's a grown woman. She is certainly old enough to be able to have a healthy aesthetic appreciation for a well-proportioned back and lean musculature without getting fluttery over it. Right. Fluttery is unbecoming. So much for the riddle of cross-species attraction.

Solas turns around, and he startles at the sight of her. Their eyes do their now habitual odd little hitch, where it becomes hard to look away without applying a good dose of will to it.

"Lethallan," he says quietly, and it is Margo's turn to startle at the sound of his voice.

Ok, this dance has to stop. A firm "no" on swooning. Swooning falls into the undignified rubric.

Fortunately, Harding's greeting helps distract Margo from the viscous helplessness of the impending and rather inopportune emotional maelstrom.

"Hey! Good to see you up and about. Dorian said the spell had affected you pretty badly."

Margo smiles at the dwarven woman. "I'm fine. I guess I missed all the action, though. Everyone all right?" She casts a glance at Solas, who is finishing up dressing Harding's wound.

"We arrived just in time to break the siege, but by the third wave of the sorry bastards, we were out of health potions," Blackwall rumbles, flexing and unflexing his hand as he examines a tanned, hairy forearm. Another bandage holds the wrist straight. "Could've been worse. Without you and Dorian decommissioning that second batch, your team would've gotten overrun eventually. We would have arrived too late." He grumbles something unflattering under his breath.

"The skirmish was intense, and I could not pause to repair the wounds in the midst of battle." Margo's expression must be puzzled, because after a quick glance at her, Solas volunteers a further explanation. "The potency of healing magic wanes the longer an open injury remains untreated. It becomes necessary to dress such wounds in the more mundane fashion before attempting further healing. I am, however, no field medic." He turns back to dressing the wound. "It is good you woke when you did. This work will be much easier with elfroot tonic." His lips quirk into a little smile, and Margo kicks the warm and fuzzies firmly under the rug. She's not even sure what their status is, at this point. He did ask her to give him some time to reflect on their… entanglement.

"The dressings are fine, Solas." Harding cranes her neck to take a look at her shoulder. "Damn Templar really got me, though, Void take him. That's my drawing hand. Anyway, our field alchemist is back, so it won't be all on you. Besides, I'm pretty sure we're headed to Haven as soon as we figure out what happened to the ravens."

Margo takes a few steps forward. Someone has bothered to stack all the empty potion vials in one corner of the tent. She's got her work cut out for her.

"You're favoring your left side," Blackwall comments. "And your breathing is shallow. Ribs? Or collarbone?"

Margo winces, touching her ribcage gingerly.

"Ribs, I think. A templar got me with a shield bash."

Blackwall harrumphs under his breath.

"A common mistake. Made you open up, and got you with the edge, right? Remind me to work on that next time we train."

Solas turns to her again. "Sit. Let me examine you."

Margo peels her armor off and takes a seat on the remaining bedroll. The elf crouches in front of her, and gestures for her to lift her tunic. Considering how much of her he's already "examined," this should certainly not cause any particular trepidation, but… well. If her breathing was shallow before…

She lifts the hem, and his cool fingers gently prod the side of her ribs. Even the bare ghost of a touch is painful. She looks down. There is a most impressive hematoma that spreads across her ribcage. The skin is mottled with interesting shades of purple, black, and blue. There's even some yellow.

"It's colorful," she winces.

"There are several fractures." Solas's tone is unmistakably disapproving. "The elfroot potion should have remedied this better. It is curious that it did not." Margo frowns, and files this new information away for later examination. Could it be that something about the lichen serves as an antagonist to the elfroot? And then, before she can ponder the thought further, Solas puts his hands against her skin and Margo feels the now perfectly familiar tingle of his magic rearranging the bone. It's not exactly painful, but it is profoundly strange, like ants crawling on the inside of her skin.

Her eyes dart to his face. "Can we talk later?" she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. She wants to find out what is happening with Evie. And perhaps ask about the nightmare. And get his take on the missing ravens. Only this and nothing more. Just good old information gathering. Right.

He nods and mouths an "Of course, lethallan." And then he trails his thumb along one of her upper ribs — presumably to check for residual damage. Except that now that the bones are healed, Margo has difficulty keeping the sensation firmly within a medical register. She shudders, and looks up at him again. Solas's gaze is intense before he averts it, but his lips part a little on a soft exhale. And then he snaps himself out of it and gets up promptly, with just the trace of a frown.

Why is this tent so absurdly hot anyway? Damn braziers. Are they trying to build a sauna? Margo straightens her tunic and shoots a quick look at the others. No one seems to be giving her knowing or smirking looks. She concludes that her little exchange with the elf was inconspicuous enough.

When in doubt, busy yourself with work, Margo decides. The potions aren't going to brew themselves.

By the time she has enough botanical mass to begin a new batch of tonics, her stomach is rumbling. The sun is bright overhead, and even the wildlife previously busy nosing around at the edges of the grassy meadow seems to have retreated for a nap. Or just gotten bored and wandered off.

She's not often alone — even when no one is directly beside her, this new life constantly surrounds her with people, a world crowded and teeming in ways that her previous existence wasn't. It's not the amount of people, exactly. Rather, it is as if the local denizens exceed their invisible encasements, taking up space usually left neutral, their attention focused outward rather than within. Come to think of it, it might be the lack of smartphones.

There are exceptions. Blackwall, for example. And Solas, she supposes. Both men share a similar quality, a kind of split focus that reroutes at least some of their attention inward, as if both are carefully keeping something of themselves locked away, mindful not to spill it into communal space for others to see. It's the opposite strategy from Varric and Dorian, who show too much — she suspects as a kind of decoy.

Margo is tying up the burlap sack and still pondering the significance of the idea when a figure materializes next to her. She was either so lost in thought that she didn't hear him approach, or he snuck up.

"Lethallan."

Solas is leaning against his staff, a warm but slightly abstract smile on his features.

Margo registers the nickname. They are alone — and as far as his choice of endearments seems to be carefully calibrated, the decision to use what she identifies as a friendly moniker should be interpreted as relevant. So, no "ma'nas" anymore? She swallows back a sudden lump in her throat.

"Solas." It comes out perfectly amiable, and Margo winces internally. It seems that every interaction in this world requires dissimulation, teaching her to carefully choreograph an emotional performance to hit the exact right social note. She doesn't particularly like it. She has always prided herself in being direct. Not rude, but also not one to sidestep a complicated conversation. But now the masks snap on with increasing ease, like something magnetized. And really, it's the fact that she would wear the mask with Solas, of all people, that claws at her with an indefinable sense of loss.

"I had thought that we could talk on your way back to camp," he offers, his voice mild.

"Of course," Margo nods, and she hoists the burlap sack over her shoulder. He lifts her knapsack, slinging it to his back.

She mouths a thank you, and they begin their slow progress up the meadow.

"Tell me about Evie," she asks, since that seems like the most relevant — and, incidentally, safest — topic.

Margo catches the briefest of frowns, as if the request is not quite what he had expected. He mulls over her words. "The Herald is much improved, however temporarily," he comments eventually.

She casts Solas a quick glance, and his expression seems expectant.

"You have a theory as to why, yes? It does seem that we did remarkably well for ourselves this time around."

"I do. I believe the Seeker's abilities to suppress magic disrupt the luck siphon, as we had theorized." He pauses. They walk in silence for a few seconds, nothing but the rustle of grass and the buzzing of invisible insects to accompany them. "There is more," he finally says.

Margo looks over. There is a twinkle of intellectual inquisitiveness in his eyes, as if he is trying to solve an intriguing theoretical puzzle, and Margo smiles despite the strange emotional heaviness at the edges of her awareness. A feeling she is not ready to examine until she is alone again.

"You have discovered something interesting," she notes instead.

"Perhaps. The Herald's mind seems sharper for some time after each suppression. Her speech is clearer and less erratic. I suspect it is because whatever ritual sought to sever her connection to the Fade — or whatever had restored it — twisted something in the process. And the connection she now has is damaged."

Margo's eyes widen in surprise. So Evie's slightly jumbled speech might be an effect of a mangled link to the Fade? And not just a matter of Bann Trevelyan's shitty parenting? She considers how the Templar dispelled Dorian's horror blast with his "proud fisherman" gesture.

"So, let me get this straight. Templars and Seekers have similar skills, whereby they can suppress magic by disrupting a mage's connection to the Fade?"

"Precisely. All magic is born of that connection, and, therefore, whenever it is stunted, a mage's casting comes unraveled."

Margo frowns, trying to puzzle out the implications.

"I have seen this work to annul a spell. What are the effects when applied to a person? Is it painful? Or debilitating?"

"It is both," he offers, his voice clipped.

"But it has the opposite effect on Evie?"

Solas shrugs, but he smiles as his gaze finds hers again, and Margo has to look away. Some things really don't belong in mixtures. For instance, signals. She focuses her eyes on a strangely shaped shrub ahead. It looks like a Joshua Tree with an identity crisis

"So. Off the top of my head, this brings me to two possible scenarios," she tries, because, when in doubt, analyze things to death.

"Oh?" he asks. "Shall we compare our conclusions?" His tone is distinctly amused, and he seems pleased with this turn to the conversation. Well, whatever else they are, the intellectual connection remains intact, at least.

"Did Cassandra's annulment effect have any consequences for the magic in Evie's mark?" she asks, and then waves her free hand back and forth to specify which mark she means.

"That had been my question also, and from what I could gather it does not."

Margo considers this. "So the two marks" — she taps her forehead, then waves her hand again — "are, as far as we can tell, operating somewhat independently of each other. Either that, or Cassandra's power is strong enough to affect one but not the other."

"It would appear so." He seems relieved by this. She supposes it is, indeed, good news. As long as Evie's ability to close the rifts — and, eventually, the Hellmouth — remains unaffected, the suppression can be used to everyone's benefit.

"Is Evie set on bringing the Templars in? Presumably under Cassandra's influence?"

"She is. I too supported the decision. It is the more judicious choice, all other things being equal. If suppression does not affect the Mark yet remedies the Herald's other predicament, the Templars are indeed the safer allies."

Right. On the one hand, anything that manages to dampen the vortex of doom, especially at a critical moment — like, say, closing the Hellmouth — is excellent news. On the other hand, there is the prospect of a bunch of heavily armed dudes, hooked on lyrium and full of religious fervor, joining an organization called the Inquisition. What could possibly go wrong? Right. Who doesn't like a good Crusade every once in a while?

They walk in silence for a moment.

"Solas…" She really should just bite the bullet and ask. All things being equal, as the elf said, it is better to know. The only thing worse than being spontaneously reclassified into the platonic category is to not know whether you've been spontaneously "platonized."

"Yes, lethallan?"

The endearment shouldn't feel like a stab to the gut — it's a perfectly nice one, as far as Margo can understand its linguistic applications — but… well.

"Dorian," she says instead. "He's figured out what I am."

Solas stops. Margo's momentum carries her forward for another few steps, then she comes to a halt as well, and turns around to face him.

"And how much has he learned of your situation?" he asks. She can't quite read his expression, but his grip on his staff is white-knuckled.

"A good chunk. There wasn't much to be done about it."

Solas turns away, eyebrows drawn in a frown. Margo plops the sack of elfroot on the ground in front of her and watches him pace.

"I feared that this would happen. I offered to locate you. I was not confident I could, considering my previous attempts had failed. And in the end, I thought it safer if the Tevinter mage undid his spell instead."

Margo shrugs. "For what it's worth, he took it rather well."

Solas's eyes narrow. "The more people uncover your secret, the greater the danger." His voice is carefully neutral, but there is, underneath the careful tone, the trace of an edge.

"I guess for now he finds me too interesting — or too useful — to report me." This sounds worse than it is. "Besides, I actually think he's a good man," Margo amends.

There is a long pause. "Has he asked for anything in exchange for his discretion?"

Margo can't quite read Solas's expression. She picks up the sack, and starts walking again, the elf falling in step beside her. Somehow it's easier when they are moving, and not facing off.

"No. But he thinks I might be able to persuade the Inquisition to smuggle some mages out of Redcliffe. He is worried about this Alexius's hostile takeover. Apparently, not all mages were on board with being annexed by Tevinter." Margo watches a creature that looks like a fennec fox hightail it to the copse of trees at the side of the meadow. "But I think he overestimates my influence."

Solas shakes his head once.

"Perhaps not. You have the ear of the Harald, and some sway with Cassandra by virtue of our shared knowledge of the Herald's unique predicament. And, if it came to it, Commander Rutherford owes you a favor." He muses over something before continuing. "Leliana strikes me as someone who might feel sympathy for the mages' plight. It is my understanding that she was close to the Hero of Ferelden once. A mage himself, if the stories are to be believed."

There had been something about Torquemada's outburst to Evie that had felt very personal indeed, for lack of a better word. Could it have something to do with this Hero of Ferelden?

She steals a glance at the elf. "For a 'humble apostate,' you certainly pay a lot of attention to the political pressure points."

He chuckles softly. "A necessary survival skill. Especially for an apostate." Then the quiet smile is replaced by a considerably more stormy expression. "Whoever is sent on that mission will be unlikely to succeed… or return alive." He stops walking, and Margo takes one more step, then follows suit, lowering the sack to the ground in front of her. "Lethallan, I…"

She forces herself to meet his gaze. When, precisely, did she turn into such a coward? But he is the one to look away first, eyes on the sky, trained in the direction of where the Hellmouth would be if they were closer to Haven.

"What will you do if we succeed in sealing the Breach? Have you considered your next move, I wonder? Remaining with the Inquisition may not be the safest course of action."

Margo blinks. As a matter of fact, she hadn't given it a single thought, too busy to make it through each day to form plans beyond immediate survival. And, incidentally, summarily avoiding the possibility that, at some point, she will have to face the music and address head-on the long-term practical aspects of establishing a new life as a multiverse migrant. She considers the can of worms. Maybe it can go under the rug, too. What's one more thing?

"I'm not sure what my alternatives are, to be honest. Open up a nice apothecary shop somewhere? Peddle love potions to the Orlesian nobles?" She chuckles to herself. "I suppose I could try to get a job at a university, though I doubt they'd find my credentials impressive. Or maybe I could go off and study Avvar plant lore in some highland village. I'm sure Amund would approve."

The elf gives her a curious look but says nothing.

"And you?" Margo deflects. "Are you planning to stay? Past the Breach, that is, provided we survive this long? If I understand correctly what the Inquisition is, being an apostate affiliated with, for all intents and purposes, a religious organization historically hostile to magic is either the safest or the most dangerous place to be."

His lips quirk into an amused smile. "For a humble rogue, you certainly pay much attention to the political undercurrents."

Margo stills, parsing his statement. She is not , in fact, a rogue. At least, not originally. He knows that. And he knows that she knows that he knows. Is he trying to tell her something about his own apostate status? Or is this nothing more than a convenient parallelism?

"I wish I could say it's a survival skill, but I think it has more to do with professional deformation," she ventures, leaving the statement deliberately ambiguous.

Solas gives her a long, inscrutable look.

"I suspect it will serve you well regardless," he finally offers. "But to answer your question, I am… uncertain. I suppose I would have to survive first, as you said yourself, although our prospects in that regard seem modestly improved."

All right. This is as good a time as any.

"Solas…"

He looks at her expectantly. Ok. She should just get this out of the way. But it feels like there is a sudden chasm beneath their feet, some kind of hidden depth that, if you stare at it too long, just might flip you the bird. Still. Margo steels herself…

"I wanted to ask you about the horror spell."

Forget ostriches. Noble birds, ostriches. This is falling squarely into that particular avian species that goes bawk bawk bawk .

"Of course. I would be curious to learn more. You mentioned you had used a herb to alter your experience of the Fade. In my travels I discovered that the ancient elves had recourse to a number of plants to manipulate and fine-tune their Dreaming."

She nods. Of course. Using botanicals to induce altered states — a fine tradition, the multiverse over.

"There was a… layer, for lack of a better word, where the visions were quite distinct. I'm sure it was all a hallucination, so I apologize if this will sound trite to you." She clears her throat, suddenly embarrassed.

"There is nothing trite about the Fade." His tone is rather flinty.

"Fair." She forges on. "The other visions had been equally unpleasant. Corpses, damaged bodies, the sort of standard image of a hellish realm. But this last bit… The beings there were also mangled, but they weren't human. No, that's not quite it. They weren't embodied." She grasps for words, trying to capture their elusive qualia. "I thought that they were spirits, or something like it. And they were disarticulated from each other and themselves. As if scattered into pieces that constantly recombined, but in patterns that were senseless." She exhales in frustration. "No, not senseless. Unstable, maybe, as if they never fit right. It felt..." Margo shakes her head and huffs a dismissive laugh. "You know how these things are. It felt like some transcendental truth, but it is probably just rubbish." She waves her hand at the unwieldy thought. "Never mind me. We have more pressing issues than dissecting my hallucinations."

Margo casts the elf a quick glance, and freezes, because Solas's expression is nowhere near the sort of mildly irritated puzzlement she expects from someone who just had to listen to the narrative of, for all intents and purposes, a bad trip. Instead, the elf is pale as a ghost, a strange shadow flickering in his eyes. His lips part, as if around some as-of-yet unformulated thought, and then he presses them firmly into a grim line. His face shutters behind a neutral mask.

"I am unsure," Solas offers, and for the first time it occurs to Margo that he might not be telling the truth. Or not the whole truth, at least. "And from your nightmare did you glean the cause behind these beings' suffering?"

She shrugs, now on her guard. "Some kind of cataclysm? An ecological catastrophe, perhaps? It's hard to say. You know how dreams have their own logic."

"They do indeed." He is quiet for a long time before he resumes. "Let me reflect on this further. Perhaps we'll speak of it again once I have some insight?"

"Of course," Margo responds, stifling an inward sigh. He offers no further interpretation, and so she keeps the nightmare's claim about her own scattered status to herself. No point in muddying the waters. They're muddy enough as it is.

By the time they get to the camp, you could cut the tense silence with a knife.

She can hear the din of conversation even before they enter the camp proper. The entire party is gathered around the campfire.

The first one she spots is Evie. The kid jumps up at the sight of her and practically runs down the slope to greet them.

"You're all right!" she exclaims, and Margo barely manages to drop the sack of elfroot before being throttled by a very enthusiastic Herald. They hug it out, and then Evie steps back and gives Margo a quick once-over. Her blue eyes seem… sharper, somehow. More focused. And there is less awkwardness to her movements, too. It is hard to say exactly what the difference is. Fewer micro-stutters, perhaps. "I mean, I knew you were alive — Varric told me — but then it's one thing to know that and another to see for yourself. And since you're gathering elfroot, I guess the nightmare is over, because you wouldn't want to gather elfroot if it looks like it's going to grow teeth and eat you, right?"

"I'm fine, kiddo. And you did well!"

Evie grins. And then her expression grows troubled.

"I think we did a good thing. Although I guess we killed a whole lot of people, which isn't particularly good, but then the people we killed would have killed all sorts of other people if we hadn't, so it's sort of like stopping a bigger bad thing with a smaller bad thing." She rubs her forehead absentmindedly. "Oh, I'm babbling again, aren't I? I do that. Babble. I thought it had gotten better, except that it's getting worse again. Oh, and I'm sorry, Solas, I didn't even greet you. That was terribly rude of me. You are well, yes? You've had a lot of work, what with Blackwall, and Scout Harding, and everyone else, and I didn't even ask how you are."

"There is no harm done, Herald. The Hinterlands are much safer for the refugees now. It was a worthy cause, and I was glad to help."

Evie smiles, clearly encouraged by this endorsement, and then turns to Margo.

"Can…" she fidgets. "I have a question. That I want to ask you. Can we have tea later?"

Margo nods with a smile, but her brows are drawn in puzzlement. "Is that the question? Whether we can have tea?"

Evie gets flustered. "No! I mean, yes, that is a question, but not the question. Not that there is the question, more like a question. Agh, I'm making a mess of it again!"

Margo gives Evie's forearm a friendly squeeze. Even with the babbling, the kid does seem better, somehow. More there .

"Anytime you're free. You can help me with the potions if you'd like."

Evie beams. "Really? I would love to!"

"I'll put you to work," Margo warns.

"Even better! I like work. It helps me think, I think. Except when I spill things. Then that's just terribly embarrassing." A shadow passes over Evie's otherwise quite radiant expression. "But I'll be careful and won't be a nuisance at all."

Solas gives them both a formal little bow and begins to glide up the road towards the others. Margo forces her gaze away from his retreating back and firmly shoves the twinge of sorrow beneath the long-suffering rug. She's going to start tripping over that thing if she isn't careful. What is wrong with her? She should have asked when she had the chance, instead of this idiotic hand-wringing. It isn't like her to run away from the prospect of bad news.

"Have you discovered what was wrong with the ravens?" she asks instead, mostly to distract herself from her thoughts.

Evie looks thoughtful. "Well, we did find them. They were with that big flock up over the mountain — you can spot ours, because they're the ones with the red feathers. I mean, the bigger red feathers. And it is flock, right? Or is it gaggle? I can never remember this. Swarm?"

Margo chuckles grimly. "If we are talking about crows, then it is actually 'murder.' A murder of crows. And then if it's ravens, then it's actually 'unkindness.'"

Evie's eyes widen, and then she wrinkles her freckled nose in distaste. "Now, that's just confusing. It makes it sound like someone is killing them. Or that they're mean to each other. But then, that's not the case at all. They were all just… flying together in circles. Very cooperatively too. Not unkindly at all."

"Did Amund have any idea why? Or Vivienne?"

Evie shrugs. "They did, but I don't think they were happy with each other's explanations. They argued a lot." She lowers her voice. "Madame Vivienne called Amund a superstitious savage. And Amund called her a sunften slangô . I don't know what it means, but it sounds terribly unflattering, doesn't it?"

Margo represses a chortle. It does sound unflattering. She'll have to ask Amund when she gets a chance. Purely out of linguistic interest, of course. To expand her Avvar lexicon.

"So what do they think happened?"

Evie's face is drawn in concentration as she recalls the two competing explanations. "Well, as far as I understood, Amund thinks that there is this Lady of the Skies, and she is the one who directs bird flight, and so she redirected the ravens to warn Amund about the Templars. And Lady Vivienne thinks that someone had planted this odd skull on top of the mountain, and the skull drew the ravens because… I'm not sure. She says there was magic that functioned like a beacon or something like it, and which confused the ravens' sense of direction?" She takes a breath, and continues. "Except then Amund said that the reason that someone had planted the skull in the first place was because such was the will of the Lady of the Skies — even if they thought they were doing it for other reasons. But this is where I got confused, because the Chantry teaches us that everything is the will of the Maker, and if so, doesn't it mean that the Lady of the Skies is also confused about why she is doing what she's doing?" Evie's eyes widen in alarm, and she switches to a conspiratorial whisper. "And then, it made me think. What if there is someone behind the Maker, and everything is actually their will, and the Maker thinks He knows why He's doing things, but actually He's just as duped as everyone else. And then, someone is behind that other one, and so on… Oh, don't tell Mother Giselle I said that. I don't think she'd like it."

Margo stares at Evie for a few seconds. Bann Trevelyan should have his ass kicked all the way to Orlais and back for not helping the kid develop her intellectual potential, among other things. As far as Margo is concerned, nothing signals "smart cookie" quite like a spontaneous capacity for heresy.

"Don't worry, I won't tell. So, did they dismantle the skull?"

Evie nods. "Dorian says he will help research its exact properties once we bring it back to Haven. It is apparently Nevarran. The skull, not Haven. Because that would be politically problematic, if Nevarra suddenly claimed Haven."

"Have you eaten?" Margo asks suddenly, as her stomach emits a particularly plaintive rumble. "I need to set the elfroot out to dry, and then we can have lunch or tea if you'd like."

"I have, but you must be hungry. Do you want me to get you a plate? And then I can help you with the elfroot, and we can have tea, and you can eat, and we can talk." Evie wrinkles her nose again. "Oh no. That's a lot of 'ands' in one sentence."

Margo smiles. "Thanks, kiddo, but I can get it myself. You are the Herald of Andraste, after all."

"It's all right," Evie smiles, and then looks towards the others. Perhaps Margo is imagining it, but there is something a little wistful to Evie's expression, and it seems to her that the young woman's eyes linger on someone. Margo follows Evie's gaze. Varric and Bull are still at their card game, along with Asher. Blackwall and Cassandra are both seated next to the fire, eating the noonday grub. Dorian and Vivienne are crouched over a football-sized object on the ground, seemingly engrossed in conversation. Solas stands nearby, leaning on his staff and seemingly listening in. Harding and Amund are to the side, feeding two ravens with what appears to be strips of raw meat.

"I don't mind getting it. I'll be right back." And before Margo has a chance to protest, the kid takes off.

By the time Margo commandeers a stretch of canvas from a disassembled Templar tent and sets the herbs out to dry, Evie is back with a bowl of stew and two cups of tea. They settle on the edge of the fabric, the elfroot's medicinal scent wafting around them in bitter effluvium, and Margo digs into her food with an effusive but muffled thank you, under Evie's rather pleased scrutiny.

"So. What did you want to talk about?" Margo asks between two bites.

Evie's face colors a bit, and she huddles around her cup of steaming liquid, idly poking at a clump of dry dirt with the toe of her leather boot.

"It's a terribly silly question, you know. You're going to think less of me, I think. But I think you'll think less less of me than if I asked one of the others." She scrunches up her face into a pained expression. "Ugh, I hate words. Language. Doing things with language. It doesn't seem to be hard for anyone else, somehow."

That's it, Margo realizes. This is what's different. Evie's self-awareness about her speech patterns, her ability to articulate her difficulties without being completely engulfed by the emotions associated with them.

"Don't worry about that one bit," Margo reassures. "No such thing as silly questions."

Evie gathers air into her lungs, and exhales. "All right. Here it goes. How do you know when you're in love?"

Margo chokes on her soup.

Evie's eyes grow huge with alarm. "Oh no! I made you choke. I should have warned you that I was going to ask you something embarrassing. Except I guess I thought I did. But it doesn't work like that, does it?"

"I'm fine, kiddo," Margo squeaks, and then coughs some more, tears in her eyes. She wipes them with her sleeve and sets the bowl of soup away from herself. "All right. How do you know you're in love. It's a good question." What the hell is she to do with this? That birds and bees conversation is just over the horizon, isn't it? "Is something making you think you're in love?" Right. When in doubt, deflect.

Evie sighs, picks a stick off the ground, and starts doodling in the dirt.

"I… don't know. I don't think I've ever been in love. Or if I was, I don't think I knew I was. So that's why I want to find out."

Ok, Margo tells herself. She can do this. The poor kid probably never did have anyone to help her parse through any of the milestones, let alone the complicated emotional stuff.

"I suppose it depends on how you want to define love. There are different manifestations of it, and different experiences." At the young woman's troubled look, Margo decides that they're not yet at the stage where Evie might appreciate the idea that romantic love is in fact a culturally and historically bound phenomenon. As if that nugget of wisdom ever helped anyone. "I guess one thing that all types of love have in common is that the other person's presence augments something in yourself," Margo tries. That seems too convoluted, and not quite right anyway. "I mean, you feel good around them?" She's not sure this is quite right either.

Evie's expression is thoughtful. "That's what I thought. But then that's what's so confusing. I mean, that's vague, isn't it? What if there are multiple someones who do that?"

Margo pinches the bridge of her nose. Has the kid developed multiple crushes?

"All right, sweetheart. I'm not going to twist your arm and ask you who it is, but it might help me understand better if I have a general idea…"

Evie blushes, but her expression remains determined. "I know. Promise you won't tell."

Margo nods solemnly. That particular secret she can keep to herself.

"It's… So we've been traveling together a lot, right. And I really didn't know her all that well before, but then with the mages, and the Templars, and Crossroads. And the goats… I mean, never mind the goats." Evie sighs, and erases her doodle with the sole of her boot. "I just feel so clearheaded whenever she's nearby. Does that count as feeling good around someone?" The kid sighs again, and hugs her knees to her chest. "But then I sometimes feel a little bit the same way around Commander Cullen. So… it means I am a bad, fickle person, doesn't it? Aunt Lucille always said that 'inconstancy' was a blight set upon women for their moral failings." Evie frowns, contemplating. "Although, come to think of it, she might have said 'incontinence.'"

Margo is glad she has no more soup to choke on. "You're talking about Cassandra, aren't you?" she manages.

Evie nods into her knees. "You won't tell her, will you? I think I would die of embarrassment."

Void in a sack , Margo thinks. And here she had thought her life was complicated.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, since it seems seasonally appropriate._

 _Next up: Philosophical discussions, fussy nobles, and political intrigue_


	35. Chapter 35: The Undiscovered Country

_In which Dorian, Solas, and Amund discuss metaphysics; Josephine deals with unreasonable expectations; and Leliana moves her chess pieces around the board._

* * *

 **Chapter 35: The Undiscovered Country**

The journey back to Haven is uneventful, if by "events" one means "bloodshed and other spectacular unpleasantness." What it lacks in violence, it makes up in quiet social turbulence. The group fractures along intangible lines of sympathy and hidden tension, unspoken alliances coalescing under the even waters of military camaraderie. On the surface, it's all amiable enough. Varric, Bull, and Asher spend a lot of time at the cards. Cassandra and Blackwall chat companionably, often with Evie their quiet but rapt listener. Margo watches the young woman prod the two warriors for stories from their past. Even Blackwall gets loquacious, after not a little reticence and evasion, dampened by a swig or two from Bull's seemingly bottomless flask and Evie's unrelenting enthusiasm for any crumb of information he volunteers. Cassandra seems flustered at first, but there is such guileless interest in Evie's eyes that even the austere Nevarran warrior relents. The one about "The Seeker and the Dragon" gets Bull to set down his cards, interjecting approving commentary. Varric watches Cassandra somewhat surrepetitiously, tawny eyes glinting in the firelight, and Margo finds herself wondering whether he's filing the stories away for future writing material... or for other purposes. Harding and Sera are gone frequently, presumably to hunt, and never fail to return looking pleased, though not always with any game in tow.

The three mages circle each other with a kind of armed-to-the-teeth neutrality, and Margo reflects on how starkly different the social worlds that produced each of them must be that magic — the core that defines them and ties them together — should also be what divides them. They talk shop for the most part, but comments about auras, staff wielding, or casting style carry subtext, tiny little barbs embedded in seemingly inoffensive remarks.

The sleeping arrangements fracture along gendered lines. Vivienne refuses to share a tent with the men — "I cannot abide the smell or the snoring, my dear, and neither should you need to," she tells Evie pointedly when the kid tries to negotiate the somewhat awkward decision of which of the two tents to occupy. "Besides, women such as us need their privacy. Let the soldiers do as they will."

Margo solves this problem simply: by sleeping outside. As they make their way further up the mountains and towards Haven, the nights turn brisk. They are still below the snow line, so the furs of her bedroll keep her warm enough. She's not alone in her decision to sleep under the stars. Amund — a mostly quiet but constant presence — sets up his bedroll on the other side of the campfire. Margo notices that the tension lines creasing his weathered face soften and smooth out the higher they move into the mountains.

The Avvar seems... watchful. The first night, he hands her another strip of lichen.

"Still necessary?" Margo asks, making the question vague because the card players are within earshot.

Amund nods. "Your wishmonger isn't far. The smell is weaker, though." His dark eyes fasten on her with a strange, searching intensity, as if he's trying to pry beneath the surface of the visible. Finally, he exhales on a rumbling chuckle. "Keep weaving, luzzil spinna. Keep weaving."

Margo frowns. "What does that mean?"

"It means 'little spider.'" He ventures no explanation for the new moniker and says little after that aside from his implacable botanical tutoring. But every time she's settling for bed, he hands her another lichen ration with the same reminder. Keep weaving, little spider.

More often than not, Margo spends the evenings adding sketches and annotations to her botanical journal. She half expects Varric to approach her at one point, the pending conversation still hovering between them, but the dwarf is biding his time. There is little privacy.

On the second night, Solas adds his bedroll to theirs, kitty-corner from Margo's but at a polite distance, and she watches quietly as the elf lies supine and still as a statue, eyes full of reflected starlight. He doesn't seem quite there, as if he is dreaming with his eyes open, but then he'll turn to her, his expression soft and a little far away, point out a star cluster, and name it, first in Elvhen, then in Common. Margo writes down the names, transcribing the sounds of the foreign tongue as best she can, and sketches the shapes with a graphite stick borrowed from Dorian.

On the third night, the Tevinter mage joins them, squaring off their triad into a quartet.

"It would seem I cannot abide the snoring either," he volunteers when Margo gives him a quizzical look.

Asleep, Margo weaves. The river bank materializes easily now, and she adds details — insects; a new smattering of water lilies; soft, feathery clouds, mauve against the dusk sky.

On the fourth night, she fashions a shack, a close replica of her Baba's little wooden shed where the old woman kept the herbs, and the winter provisions of pickles and jams. It's not much. Four walls, a thatched roof, a single window with an old lace curtain. And a door with a lock. The furniture is sparse: shelving for the plants and jars, a rustic bookcase, a chair, an old fold-out table, and a simple cot with a threadbare blanket. Margo enters the dwelling with trepidation. She isn't sure what she expects — perhaps Baba to be sitting on the chair, dark gnarled fingers weaving a basket, or darning a sock, or winding thread around a bushel of herbs.

The shack is empty, but it smells of elecampane and wormwood. Home.

Margo arranges herself on the cot and listens to the cicadas outside.

It is dark when she wakes.

She feigns sleep, listening to the quiet, but animated conversation.

"Have you considered the possibility that she might be somniari?" Dorian's slightly accented voice is barely above a whisper, but the night is still, nothing but the distant hooting of some nocturnal bird to break the hollow silence of the foothills. The words carry. Not far — but far enough for Margo to hear clearly. She keeps her breathing even and deep.

A pause.

"She is not a mage, Dorian." Solas's tone is carefully scrubbed of all expression except for a kind of aloof politeness, which makes Margo conclude the elf is either royally pissed off or in one of his mercurial strops. "She said her world had neither Fade nor magic, neither spirits nor demons. Whatever is behind her predilection for the Dreaming, I doubt it can be rendered in our terms."

"And if you had asked me not a week ago if the Nevarrans, with their absurd theories about the interchangeability of departed souls and spirits, might be on to something, I would have laughed you out of polite company, too." There is a dry, crackling snap. A blast of warmth laps at Margo's cheek. She concludes that Dorian must be shuffling the logs in the campfire. "And yet, here we are. A three-way swap across multiple worlds. Multiple. Worlds. Have you considered the implications? Forget your southern Chantry drivel for a moment."

"Not my Chantry."

"Nor mine. And call me a southerner again, lowlander. See where that gets you."

"Oh very well, spare me your theological punctiliousness — this is not my point. As far as I am aware, no religious doctrine gives a satisfactory answer as to what happens to the souls of the dead. No, no, allow me to finish. We know they enter the Fade, and then — what, precisely? Yes, the Chantry will wax poetic about how they are brought to the Maker's side. I presume your people have other ideas, Solas, as do yours, Amund. My point is simply this — after a soul passes through the Fade, we lose all knowledge of it. Poof! Gone. But this, in itself, is a logical paradox. Essence does not just disappear . Nor does matter."

A long, pregnant pause.

"Are you suggesting that the dead will travel on to other worlds after their passing?" There is just the hint of an edge to Solas's voice, and Margo is not sure whether it is irritation, reluctant curiosity, or something else entirely.

"It is a perfectly valid hypothesis. That perhaps some do — those that do not become permanently moored in the Fade, or elsewhere. From this perspective, it is entirely possible that the Void itself is just another world. Tell me, Amund. What are your people's theories on the afterlife?"

The Avvar grunts something guttural, and unmistakably unflattering. "Depends who you ask. Most reunite with their kin. A few — the ones still needed — return into new bodies."

"Ah, yes, very good, you see! Now let us take somniari once again. They have become exceedingly rare, have they not? Trust me on this, the Magisters have been trying to breed the quality back into the 'stock' for generations." Dorian spits out the term "stock" like it isn't something to mention in polite company. "With remarkably little success, I should add. Whatever causes the propensity to walk the Fade, it is not the bloodline, that much is clear."

"I doubt that somniari who remain are travelers from other worlds," Solas retorts crisply, with just the trace of a chuckle.

"With all due respect, Solas, you miss my point. I have a strong suspicion that whatever happened to our dear Margo is rather unique. But if she is possible, then wouldn't it logically ensue that she is not the first, or the only? Perhaps not in this particular configuration, but we must consider the possibility of quieter crossings, don't you think? Perhaps something like what Amund describes. A… what might the word be. 'Reincarnation,' perhaps? It would explain why certain unique magical talents reappear after generations without apparent rhyme or reason."

Margo forces her breathing to come out slowly and evenly, but it hitches nonetheless because, suddenly, she has a vivid memory of Jake after Baba's funeral. " There are other worlds than these, Margo ."

"I am certain there may be other explanations for the phenomenon," Solas ventures.

Margo tries to shift quietly, because all this sneaky lying around pretending to sleep is surprisingly hard on the back. She rolls to her side, still feigning slumber. The conversation stops abruptly, but after a time, when she doesn't stir, they resume.

"You seem to be very determined to dismiss our unusual friend's abilities, Solas," Dorian suddenly notes. "You use the Fade extensively — and you have offered to retrieve her from the horror spell. Have you not attempted to reach her in the Fade before? I must admit I find that remarkably hard to believe. If I had the capacity, I would certainly be curious to try."

Margo swallows back a very inopportune fit of giggles that is threatening to bubble up to the surface, and blow her cover. It doesn't help that Dorian's statement provokes another long uncomfortable pause.

"I dismiss nothing, Dorian. My point is simply that, by Margo's own account, her world lacks the defining qualities of ours. Applying labels that we find familiar reveals no more than the false comfort of mistaken similarity."

An annoyed sigh follows. "You are impossible. I must ask, is this an elven thing? Because she is human? Surely you realize there had been human Dreamers, yes? Thalsian certainly does not have much to recommend him, as far as historical figures go — unless you find blood magic and worshipping dragons a perfectly laudable undertaking — but nonetheless, he was what he was. Just because she is human does not exclude it from the realm of possibility."

"I never said it did. Besides, whatever she was before, I do not think human is what she is now. On a number of levels."

What in the Void does the elf mean by that? Margo supposes it isn't technically inaccurate, all things considered, but it does raise some questions.

Right. Sleepy breathing.

"Ah. Not human, hmm? Well I suppose this does answer another question that intrigued me earlier." Dorian sounds pleased with himself.

"And what question would that be?" Solas's tone is, once again, oh-so-carefully mild.

There is still the trace of a smile in Dorian's utterance when he responds. "Oh, never mind me, I am talking to myself — one does enjoy the occasional conversation with an intelligent interlocutor, you see."

"All the more so when the interlocutor's intelligence is only surpassed by his humility," Solas retorts without missing a beat.

The effort to repress the giggles is truly Herculean.

"Ha! Not a bad parry. I'll concede you that one. But we keep getting away from the thread of my argument. Most pertinently, we must consider the possibility that not only are there other worlds beside ours, but that the Fade touches them in some manner. Truly, you must realize how groundbreaking this is. But if you are not interested in the metaphysical implications, let us turn to the practical ones. If Margo is somniari — yes, yes, let us leave precise definitions aside for a moment — she must be trained. Even if she cannot use magic in the usual way, there may be the pesky problem of susceptibility to demons."

Margo shoves the sudden influx of dread under the rug — it's a whole archeological dig under there — and tackles the emergent conceptual model. Right. Exhibit A. Consider the Cosmic Asshole. Hadn't Adan mentioned that Imshael's Bargain was not an uncommon formula for testing alchemists? Could it have been that he and Minaeve had selected it precisely because they were reasonably certain of its relative innocuousness in her case? Both the alchemist and the enchanter seem, on the surface at least, like empirically minded people. They presumably would not have experimented blindly without thinking of the consequences. If these somniari, whoever they are, are susceptible to demons, then certainly Adan would not have taken the risk if he had thought she was one. But then, it would appear that somniari are classified as mages — so, by process of elimination, it is entirely possible that they simply did not assess the risk correctly.

Margo's breathing accelerates. It is a classic example of a fallacy concerning accident, but in reverse. Socrates is an animal. Donkeys are animals. Socrates is a donkey. Somniari use the Fade. Mages use the Fade. Somniari are mages. From there, the risk assessment would have gone as follows: if Margo is a rogue, she is not a mage. If she is not a mage, she cannot be somniari. Here, my dear apprentice, have this lovely alchemical formula that creates a pocket of the Fade and invites an ancient demon in. Why, yes, Master Adan, what a marvelous idea, I'll get on that right this minute.

"Amund." Solas's voice is in that pleasantly polite range, but beneath the carefully crafted veneer, there is a trace of tension. "You know of her predicament and have been training Margo in your people's botany. What do you think of her situation?"

The Avvar is silent for a long time before answering.

"The void charmer isn't wrong. Spinners need training, no matter how they come about. Since you find the task distracting, someone should do the toil."

"Distracting? I…"

"Void charmer?" Dorian interjects before Solas can finish his protest. "Would that be me? But why, pray tell, void charmer? I don't so much mind the charmer part, but void?"

"Because that is what you are, lowlander."

"What is he?" Margo assumes that Dorian is pointing to Solas.

"Heh." Amund's grumble manages to be amused, exasperated, and a little uneasy. "My tribe calls his kind dreamstriders."

"Ah! Is this the Avvar term for somniari?"

"No."

"How delightfully detailed. Let us try another approach. Is Margo a dreamstrider also?"

Amund grunts with unmistakable irritation. "Is a raven an owl? Is a spider a wolf?" He sighs. "Your blathering is giving me a headache, lowlanders. Do you not hear what the wind whispers this night? There is much work ahead of us, and the Lady's signs remain uncertain."

"Forgive us," Solas's voice is just a tad clipped. "I, too, am curious about your culture's interpretation of the issue. What is Margo then, in your opinion?"

There is a rumbling sound, like waves breaking over gravel, and Margo identifies it as the Avvar's laugh. "Awake."

" Vishante kaffas ! For how long now?"

"Ask her. And now, quiet. Let me sleep."

Margo opens her eyes, tucks her hand under her cheek, and grins. "Please, by all means, don't stop on my account," she offers innocently. "All of this is very instructive."

Dorian's expression is utterly scandalized for a few seconds, and then he barks an amused "Ha!" His mustache twitches in a lopsided smirk. "Devious woman."

Margo's eyes dart to Solas. His eyebrows are drawn in a frown, but a smile quirks his lips. Apparently the elf can appreciate a good subterfuge. Their eyes meet for a second, and Margo quickly looks away. There is such unmistakable heat in his gaze that it shoots right through her, and refracts back with an answering sweet ache in her lower belly. She closes her eyes against the vertigo of it. Well then.

"Wait a moment, now. What does our irascible Amund mean by 'distracting'? Solas, you are, indeed, our foremost expert on the Fade. What, precisely, do you find distracting about the task of lending your guidance on the matter, I wonder?" Dorian's voice is a perfect mixture of innocence and guile.

"I have never said…"

Apparently, the universe decides to take pity on the elf, because before he can finish defending himself, Varric lifts the flap of the tent and exits into the predawn darkness with a dramatic yawn.

"What's with the ruckus, you lot?"

It takes them another day to make it to Haven, and the rest of the journey is mercifully boring. Margo gets a few minutes alone with Evie and uses the opportunity to float the idea of helping the Redcliffe mages. The young woman's face grows determined. "Of course, we must help! Even if Commander Cullen gives me that terribly disappointed look of his. He really doesn't seem to like mages much, but surely even he can understand that this is the right thing to do. We can't just abandon them, can we?"

Margo returns to the apothecary only to be greeted by Master Adan like a long-lost relative. The kind of long-lost relative who, before becoming lost, left you with their gastrically challenged mutt and a whole pile of unpaid credit card bills.

"Finally!" The man folds his arms over his chest, and taps the tip of his boot impatiently against the floorboards. "Better late than never, I suppose. Have you spoken to the ambassador yet?"

Margo's eyes widen. Oh shit. She had completely forgotten about Lady Montilyet's summons. Oh dear unspecified deity, how long has it been?

"Of course you haven't. Now go, before I have a revolt on my hands. Do I look like I should cater to the ridiculous whims of Orlesian nobles? No? Good. Because I'm not dealing with this shit, Void take them all."

Margo winces. "Is there anything in particular they want?"

Adan throws his hands up in frustration. "What part of 'not dealing with this shit' was unclear, apprentice?" Another string of colorful profanities graces her ears. "Here. You haven't been eating again — soon you'll be able to hide behind a broomstick if you continue in that vein. Useful, I suppose, but I'm not burning your starved remains. Not on this frozen rock, in any case: waste of wood. I set aside some stew for you when I thought you lot were back. Eat. And then off you go!"

All things being equal, Margo decides that bowing to the chain of command is sound strategy. She scarfs down the cold, partially congealed soup — it tastes like soggy cardboard — and bustles over to the chantry.

Josephine, in a striking purple brocade dress, greets her with a radiant if slightly worried smile.

"Oh agent! It is so good to see you. Leliana has informed me of the Herald's progress in the Hinterlands — we are all so relieved to hear of the overall success of the operation. The timing could not have been better. We have several visitors from Orlais joining us in Haven within the week." She clasps her hands in front of her. "And on this subject, I was hoping I could request a favor. Master Adan mentioned you may be more amenable to these matters. You were raised by a… hedgewitch, is that right?"

Margo cocks her head, and makes a noncommittal noise. This is going nowhere good.

"You see, I may have mentioned once or twice that our accommodations in Haven are, overall, somewhat lacking. We want to make our visitors comfortable, especially in anticipation of a protracted stay. There are certain things that Orlesian apothecaries have on offer that a military operation might overlook, you understand."

Margo smiles politely. What Orlesian bodily function is she going to have to facilitate this time?

Josephine's smile becomes tense. She casts a quick glance around, notices the presence of the Chantry mother — the very same Chantry mother Evie did not want to get wind of the Herald's heretical tendencies — and grasps Margo's elbow.

"Agent, would you step into my office? Perhaps we could have some tea, and I would explain in more detail?

"Of course," Margo smiles. "Lead the way, ambassador."

About fifteen minutes and two cups of excellent oolong later, Margo has a list of five formulas. She quickly looks through Auntie's tome to identify them. Unsurprisingly, there is an aphrodisiac, an abortive, and a fertility inhibitor. The fourth formula is a deodorizing agent. And the last one promises to remove excess hair. Margo reads the addendum to that one, noted in a different handwriting: "Do not apply the paste too close to your privies. Burns like a rage demon's ass, it does." She hopes that her expression remains appropriately bland.

"Please, simply let me know which ingredients might be lacking. Most of these are terribly overpriced when acquired ready-made, and our financial resources are still somewhat overextended. But making the medicines available to our guests would be of great help, I am sure."

Bootleg birth control. Better yet, bootleg deodorant. Maybe she can sprinkle everyone with it — the latter, not the former. Margo nods. All in all, very useful.

Upon her exit from the chantry, Margo's day takes a resolute turn for the worse. Torquemada materializes in front of her like some particularly malevolent jack-in-the-box, her narrow face morphing through three different expressions before it settles into the carnivorously inclined one — which, Margo supposes, is what passes for interested as far as Comrade Nightingale is concerned.

"Spymaster. How may I be of help?"

"Agent. I hear you were quite useful to your team during your travels in the Hinterlands. Do you fancy a walk?"

Margo stills. The tone is all wrong. It is almost friendly. The woman's voice is melodic and a little saccharine. The steel is still there, in the background, but it is all wrapped up in velvet, with a little bow on the side to make it look especially inoffensive. Margo's not buying that bridge.

"Of course."

They stroll along Haven at a casual pace.

"You are no doubt aware that our Qunari friend is an agent of the Ben-Hassrath, yes?" Torquemada's tone is conversational. She might as well be commenting on Bull's preference for strong spirits. "Of course you are. In any event, so far the association has proven useful. Upon your group's return to Haven, he passed on some interesting documents that just happened to have come into his possession — such a fortuitous and timely turn of events! If I were a more suspicious woman, I would have perhaps thought that he'd had them all along, waiting to decide what to do with them, but that conclusion would be much too ungenerous towards our prospective allies, don't you think?" Leliana trills a delighted little laugh, and Margo shudders internally. Dear merciful universe but the Spymaster is creepy.

Leliana stops, and Margo follows suit.

"Tell me, agent. How long have you been sporting this Nevarran identity now? A little over a month, yes?"

Had it been that long since she had arrived? Margo supposes that it is about right. Not that she's sporting anything, Nevarran or otherwise, but she is not about to disabuse Torquemada of that notion.

"And not once have I seen you break from the persona. That takes impressive dedication, I will grant you that." The woman rifles through her coat, and extracts a folded letter. "As luck would have it, this pertains to you." She hands Margo the sheet of folded paper.

Margo congratulates herself on the fact that her hands tremble only slightly. She unfolds the paper and tries to make sense of the prissy scroll.

 _Dearest,_

 _I have considered the case of your little protegée. An interesting girl, not without talent, and an elf besides. I will grant you, she is easy on the eyes. The scars will need to be worked on, of course, that kind of physical flaw can be made interesting in our profession, but not so easily for a woman. You tell me she is skilled in other ways. I haven't had the pleasure, but in itself that is hardly sufficient. If you wish me to take her on as a project, she will need more than to sneak into my bedchamber. That is not much of an achievement, as I am sure you are aware — I do go to great lengths to make the place very easy to breach. Although stealing my bird and setting it to terrorize the castle was an amusing touch._

 _I can imagine you are mounting a protest — allow me to assuage your anxiety. I am not opposed in principle — the fact that she is an elf and has some knowledge of the Dalish but yet is not one of them can be politically expedient. In these times especially. But a bard's skills aren't simply those of a spy or a courtesan. You tell me she has a pleasant enough singing voice and that she acquits herself well in stealth. It is a start, but does she have the potential for The Game?_

 _Here is my offer. If she can manage to do something to truly capture my attention, I will consider your request, and will arrange for her training. Until then, enjoy her undoubtedly delightful company._

 _Your faithful friend (though do not think I have forgotten our little tryst on that terribly uncomfortable settee)_

 _-M._

Margo blinks. First of all, who in the Void is "M"? And second, is there anyone her "gently used" host body hasn't previously banged?

"You are surprised?" Torquemada quips, not without amusement. "I had so hoped you would shed light on this fascinating missive. My understanding is that "M" is Lady Mantillon. To capture the attention of The Dowager — even ever so perfunctorily — is no small feat. You must have had a truly powerful protector. Who was it, I wonder?"

Torquemada plucks the letter from Margo's hands, folds it, and tucks it away. "Regardless, this does explain some of the burning questions that annoyed me so since our acquaintance. Your little stunt with that Tevinter mage was no doubt a last-ditch gambit to impress your masters and to perhaps secure the training you coveted. A bard's life is a dangerous one, but it does open doors, especially for an elf. If your allegiance to Charter had begun to chafe, and you had looked for a way out, this would be a plausible escape route."

Margo says nothings.

"Silence, hmm? Golden, isn't it. Times have changed, agent. Your allegiance is to the Inquisition now. But I do not disagree with Lady Mantillon's assessment — you do have potential. Whether that potential can be of service to us remains to be seen. You were helpful in the Hinterlands, I am told. If you wish to try on a bard's life in earnest, I could offer you the chance to do just so."

Margo signals to her face to make a politely interested moue. Whether she succeeds is anyone's guess, but it doesn't really matter. Torquemada is on a roll.

"The Herald came to see me this morning, with an impassioned plea to help the Redcliffe mages. Cassandra and Cullen both insist that we should recruit the Templars — they were quite impassioned as well, I should add. Josephine is on the fence. Tell me, agent. What would you have me do to break this stalemate?"

"Aid the Templars," Margo responds without hesitation.

Torquemada cocks a perfectly tweezed eyebrow. "How interesting. And the mages then?"

Margo knows exactly where this is headed. If she had ever doubted there had been a script, she no longer does. Torquemada has maneuvered her exactly where she wanted her. "We should send people to investigate what is happening in Redcliffe." The line sounds rehearsed.

Leliana smiles. It's not pleasant. "That Dorian. Charming, isn't he? And persuasive, I take it."

Oh, for fuck's sake. At this point, Margo just wants to get this over with.

"Yes! And very well dressed! Not to mention that he makes a valid point about Tevinter's potential involvement and the necessity to learn more information on that subject."

Torquemada trills her twinkling little laugh and claps her hands. "A spine, agent! What a delightful discovery! Ah yes. I think you will do quite well. As a matter of fact, I have just the team in mind. The Qunari is a spy, so his experience will be valuable, as will that of the Tevinter mage. Solas, I should add, followed on the Herald's heels and volunteered his help should we decide to mount a rescue mission. It does not surprise me that his sympathies should fall with the mages, of course. And I suppose I could spare him." She waves her hand. "Just, try not to break the apostate, yes? His ability to stabilize the Herald's mark has been most useful."

Margo swallows.

"Anything else, Spymaster?"

"As a matter of fact, yes! Our spies report that Redcliffe is about to shut down. By the time we are ready, the only way for your group to enter will likely be as a traveling minstrels."

Margo almost chokes on that. Surely, Torquemada is making a funny?

Leliana's voice is mocking. "You wanted to try the profession on for size? Here is your opportunity. And if you do happen to make it back alive, I'll consider training you myself. I was a bard once, you know."

Margo forces herself not to gape. Train her? Well then.

Yippee ki-yay .

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by a very grumpy and under-slept Amund who's had it with these southerners._  
 _(In case you are curious, the title of the chapter is a reference to Hamlet's rant about the unknowability of the afterlife - and fits somewhat with Dorian's metaphysical musings about the Fade)._

 _Next up: Redcliffe, and, as far as genres go, probably a blend of a comedy of errors and horror._


	36. Chapter 36: Bread and Circuses

So. You knew this was coming, didn't you? This chapter merits a content warning. So. Content warning: Beware. _Singing_.

* * *

 **Chapter 36: Bread and Circuses**

On a normal day, the alchemical work would absorb Margo's attention, but there is nothing particularly normal about a day where you discover that your body's previous occupant had been taking active steps towards becoming some kind of weaponized courtesan.

Margo moves through the motions of assembling the five formulas Josephine requested, muttering under her breath the whole time. Fortunately, there is no one to hear her — Adan hightailed it out of the shop the second she was back with her new assignment. The apothecary has the ingredients for everything but the hair removal paste — they are missing an appropriate base for the poultice, which requires the subcutaneous back fat of a creature called a snoufleur . Margo wonders what the beast looks like. The image that her mind conjures is a snuffling cauliflower.

She feels only a vague twinge of guilt at appropriating a small portion of the concoctions — at least in the case of the deodorant, she figures that appropriation can be interpreted as a common good. Margo stares at the abortive with vague unease. She doesn't know much about elven biology, but she has not gotten her period — and it has been over a month. She swallows back a sudden lump in her throat. Ah, fuck, when did Maile have her little escapade with that Tevinter mage, exactly? Surely she couldn't be pregnant . Surely Maile would have been careful. Oh Maile, you poor, stupid girl . What sort of shit life do elves have around here that fucking, killing, and singing her way through the social hierarchy seemed to her like the best possible option? Void in a sack.

Margo lifts her shirt and stares at her stomach. It's flat, all lean muscles and old, healed injuries. The horizontal scar has gone from pink to white. It is possible that elves have different cycles. Or that she can't get pregnant. She releases her shirt and lets her face drop into her hands. Right. No hand-wringing. It's not like she can run over to a local pharmacy and get a home pregnancy kit. She needs to find a healer — preferably the Theodosian version of a midwife — get herself looked at, and go from there. Agonizing over this now will do her no good.

Margo stacks the physics into the designated crate after labeling them, adds a request for snoufleur fat, pulls on her coat, and wanders outside into the brisk Haven afternoon. Before fleeing Torquemada's enchanting company, she had been ordered to report to Bull, since he was designated lead on their little operation. But in the complex choreography of the Inquisition leadership's political maneuvering, they have been given two days to rest and prepare. Bull can wait. She isn't sure she is quite ready to face him. After all, he's known about Maile's bardic aspirations the entire time — Torquemada was certainly not idly seeding the idea that the Qunari had been sitting on the letter like a particularly malevolent chicken, incubating it until the time it became politically expedient for him to reveal it.

Her legs carry her past Solas's hut, and she hesitates for only a moment before marching on, precisely because the impulse to knock on his door is so strong her hands are practically aching with it. Men. Buses. Elves. No running.

The decision to seek out Varric isn't really one in the strict sense of the term. It is more that she finds herself walking towards his tent with all the intentionality of a mindless automaton suddenly freed from its habitual rails and set to roam the countryside. She finds him out front, chatting with a Chantry sister who is clasping a book to her unmistakably heaving bosom and practically bouncing up and down in the slushy snow. Varric looks somewhat flattered, but wary.

"Varric?" Margo calls out, to give everyone enough time to adjust.

"Prickly!" If she didn't know any better, she would think that Varric is distinctly relieved by her arrival. "You're just in time. Thanks for stopping by."

Margo frowns briefly, and then forces her lips into a smile. Apparently the dwarf is adopting the time-tested strategy of extracting oneself from an awkward social situation by simulating a pre-existing appointment.

"I should probably go," the sister volunteers tentatively.

"Sure, Sister. I'll catch you later."

The woman walks away with a brief glance at Margo.

"Admirer?" Margo asks.

Varric shakes his head and groans. "Worse, Prickly. An aspiring auteur. Wants me to introduce her to my editor."

Margo grins, this time in earnest. "What does she write?"

Varric just shrugs. "What they all write. It's all a variation on the same damn theme. Templar falls in love with a mage. Mage falls in love with a Templar. They are misunderstood and persecuted. They cannot be together, because plot. When they finally are, lots of florid details about the size and shape of his manhood and where it gets inserted. Worst part? This shit actually sells."

Margo pats Varric on the shoulder and clucks sympathetically. "Not everyone can write a Tethras. Be generous."

"True enough. And speaking of thickening plot, I have a few things I've been meaning to run by you. And I figured you might want to chat, too, what with your new assignment. Bard, heh?" Varric's amber eyes settle on her, and Margo notices, not for the first time, that the dwarf's gaze is nothing if not shrewd.

"I would love a chat, Varric."

He nods. "Step into my office." He gestures ironically at his tent.

Margo isn't sure why she didn't expect the books. Perhaps it isn't the books, exactly, but rather their sheer volume and diversity. Over the last month, Varric has somehow managed to assemble a small but incredibly well-stocked library. Not just his novels, either — everything from history to theology to philosophy. Art. Plays. Political pamphlets. Poetry. Margo whistles, taking in the wealth of literature.

"Varric, I know we've only known each other for a short time, but can I move in with you?"

He chuckles. "I'd suggest you start with buying me dinner."

"Dinner, drinks, a pet nug — whatever will get me into your library," Margo trails, still captivated by all the spines. He even has an entire shelf dedicated solely to alchemy and botany.

This time, the dwarf's laugh is full-throated and surprisingly unguarded. Margo looks at him with a grin. His mirth is infectious. "I know how this goes, Prickly. You only want me for my books."

"And your scintillating company," she retorts, turning back to the shelves. Oooh, a omnibus on the lyrium trade!

"I'm flattered, I truly am. But I prefer my roommates a bit more… ahh… substantial."

"Ah, I see. A stout dwarven woman, perhaps?"

He chortles. "Not necessarily dwarven. Besides, I'm pretty sure your attention isn't exactly on yours truly, much as it breaks my heart. And I really don't relish the idea of being 'accidentally' struck with a lightning bolt in our next fight. Anyway, speaking of stout, what in the Void is happening to you? I know you do eat, but…"

Margo frowns. Is it that bad? Her clothes do seem to fit a little more loosely lately, but nothing quite so dramatic — at least, nothing that should warrant two comments about her weight in one day.

"A growth spurt," she parries, still keeping the smile on her face, even if she doesn't feel it.

"Spoken to Chuckles about it? You might have a worm. Seen it plenty in Kirkwall, especially in Lowtown."

She shakes her head. A worm, perhaps not. But a parasite of the cosmic variety? Dear Unspecified Deity's Nether Regions, is there a physical component to Imshael's attention beyond vomiting blood? Oh well, under the rug it goes.

"Back to books. Can I borrow something?"

Varric narrows his eyes at her. "Sure, Prickly. What would you like?"

Margo considers her most immediate needs. "Something on the political history of Thedas."

Varric gives her another one of his quizzical looks, turns to the bookshelf, and extracts a huge doorstopper of a tome. "How about a Genitivi? The upside with this one is that you probably could use it as blunt-force instrument in a pinch. Oh. And while I like you, Prickly, if you scribble on it, you'll lose your borrowing privileges."

"Understood." Margo receives the book with barely contained greed and tucks it away into her pack. He gestures for her to sit, and she lowers herself to the chair he indicates. He plops down opposite her with a sigh.

"So. The Herald."

Margo nods. They are down to business — in other words, Evie. She had no doubt whatsoever that this was what Varric had been meaning to talk to her about. Evie and the seemingly improved luck siphon. And yet, she cannot help but wonder why he has decided to approach her of all people — and not, say, Cassandra. Or Solas, for that matter.

"It seems that it has gotten better," Margo ventures cautiously.

Varric nods thoughtfully. "It has. Not completely — I still got misfires — but the fights weren't slapstick-awful. So let's file that away as a win. See, Prickly, that's not the problem."

Margo frowns. "What's the problem then?"

The dwarf's eyes narrow. "You haven't spoken to Chuckles about it, have you?"

She shakes her head. "He hasn't mentioned anything other than the improvement."

"You two had a falling out?"

Margo keeps her face neutral at first, but then the air rushes out of her. She slumps a little. "Not exactly. To be fair, Varric, I don't believe there was ever anything to fall out of." It's a creative bending of the truth, at least as far as her own emotional climate is concerned, and she has no doubt that Varric knows this perfectly well.

The dwarf chortles, but the sound bears only a passing resemblance to genuine amusement. And then his expression turns serious, and perhaps slightly sad. Margo has the sneaking suspicion that this is an affective undercurrent that his habitual sarcastic mask is designed to conceal. "Ah. Well, shit. No wonder he seemed a bit distracted lately. I suppose I can't blame him for not noticing."

A very unpleasant chill creeps down Margo's spine. "Varric, out with it. What's going on?"

The dwarf sighs, and props his elbows on his knees, gaze at the floor. "Have you taken a good look at Ca—… the Seeker lately?"

Margo blinks. She and Cassandra haven't really interacted much beyond the simple formalities of camp life and traveling together. Margo tries to summon a recent memory of the warrior woman. She seemed… tired, perhaps, but all of them were road-worn by the time they got back to Haven.

"What have you noticed, Varric?"

"It's killing her," the dwarf says simply. "Whatever ability she uses to knock out Evie's curse, or whatever that thing is, it's leeching something. Not sure if it's because the Seekers don't use lyrium like the Templars do, so their little suppression trick has to come from elsewhere, or if it's something about Evie's blighted luck siphon, but by the time we made it to the Templar base camp, she was barely walking. That's why Hero took so much damage. He was making sure he drew all the attention." Varric sighs. "Hero's not stupid. He notices these things."

Margo digests this. Of course. Why didn't she think that there would be a cost? Magic, of whatever persuasion, does not manifest ex nihilo — this much has been obvious from the mages' reliance on lyrium potions to sustain their casting in battle. Or from the Templars' use of the stuff, for that matter. Why was she operating under the assumption that similar principles did not apply to Cassandra's abilities to suppress magic?

"So, the solution isn't sustainable," Margo concludes. She meets Varric's gaze, noticing the worry creases that bracket his mouth. He averts his eyes and stares at the floor like it's about to reveal the secret to the universe. "You're worried about Cassandra, but if we bring others into it — namely, the Templars, the only other ones able to suppress magic — this exposes Evie. And makes the whole situation a political…ah... gaatlok keg, waiting to blow." Margo's voice is gentle, almost conciliatory, because at that moment Varric looks so damn vulnerable she just wants to throw her arms around the sarcastic bastard and lie through her teeth that it'll all be fine in the end. Since she isn't about to insult his intelligence, Margo leans forward instead and gives his forearm a brief squeeze.

"Damn it, Prickly. The Seeker is never going to admit weakness — she'll run herself into the ground instead. And while she and I haven't exactly gotten along, she can be reasoned with. She's got a soft streak deep down beneath all that steel and duty. Which is more than I can say about some of the other Inquisition founders."

"So this is all just worry about the balance of power?" Margo asks. Oh, look — another bridge for sale!

Varric makes a face. "Yeah, yeah, don't gloat. If you breathe any of this to her, I will write you into a romance with Seggrit in my next book."

Margo makes a suitably horrified face, but she's quietly glad that Varric seems to be regaining his balance. That vulnerable look sits on him askance. "So we need a new solution," she states with confidence she doesn't feel.

"Yep." Varric looks up from the floor and leans back in his chair. "That we do." He smothers the worry under another layer of quiet irony, his gaze turning wry once again. "All right. Enough wallowing. At least if there is any trouble with recruiting the Templars, Evie can just run up and hug them all. They won't know what hit them. Now. Drinks?"

"Varric, wait. I want to ask for your advice."

He offers her a slightly crooked smile. "Worst vice is advice, but I'm always happy to make a suggestion."

Margo exhales. How does she handle this? "I know nothing about being a bard. And what I might have known at one point, I do not remember."

"Memory still faulty?" Varric asks with a little twinkle in his eye.

Margo just shrugs. "Still faulty. Nor do I entirely trust Leliana's sudden enthusiastic endorsement. It feels like… she's trying to stage something."

"All right. Run that conversation by me."

She does. After Margo is finished, Varric nods slowly. He scrapes the palm of his hand against the stubble on his chin in what is probably his 'I'm thinking' gesture. "From a tactical perspective, it's a win-win for the spymaster. She would've sent someone to check out Redcliffe regardless. I'm pretty sure the decision to help the Templars was a done deal the second the Seeker and Curly united on the issue. Ruffles might have been on the fence, but that's diplomacy for you — you hedge your bets and don't speak too directly."

"Does Evie's voice not carry weight?"

The dwarf bobbles his head from side to side, the movement neither affirmative nor negative. "Look, Prickly. Here's what you need to know. When you get right down to it, the Inquisition boils down to Justinia's two Hands. Everyone else is auxilliary."

Right. Divine Justinia — the cleric who got blown up in the Chantry — and her two advisors. So, Cassandra and Torquemada.

"All right. I get that." Margo sighs. "But why send me ?"

"At a guess? Because you're an unknown variable, and the Nightingale doesn't like unknown variables. Trust me on that — I've been on the wrong end of her attention, too. On the wrong end of both Hands, as a matter of fact. Not a comfortable place to be." He sighs and rubs his wrist absentmindedly. "But it's not just about you. Have you noticed who else is going?"

Margo checks off the candidates. The Iron Bull — a self-confessed Qunari operative. Solas, an apostate elven mage. And Dorian.

"She's sending all the wild cards out," Margo finally concludes.

"If you make it back with interesting information, great. And if you don't make it back..." Varric shrugs.

Margo pinches the bridge of her nose and squeezes her eyes shut. The logic is suspiciously reminiscent of how the religiously minded folks of Salem determined whether someone was a witch. Toss the witch in the water: if she drowns, she was innocent. Win-win indeed.

"What of this strange decision to send us as minstrels?" Margo shakes her head. "Is she… taking the piss?"

Varric chortles. "You know what, Prickly, the less I think about what the Nightingale might find humorous, the better I sleep at night. But if you're going to play the role, here's a suggestion. Trust me, I'm a storyteller. Not that different from a bard, if you think about it." He leans in conspiratorially. "The single most important thing to do is to gauge your audience. Everything else?" He waves his hand dismissively. "Small change."

And with that, Varric gets up from his chair and stretches. "But if you want some pointers, I happen to have a friend who might be able to help."

About half an hour later, they are ensconced in the tavern with mugs of ale in front of them. The new addition to their duo — a tall, freckled woman with cheekbones you could cut yourself on and a very complex updo — straddles the bench next to Margo. The woman, who introduces herself as Maryden, thrusts an oversized string instrument that looks like a banjo on growth hormones into Margo's arms. It has four bass strings, spaced too wide for human fingers — let alone elven ones — and Margo just shrugs and hands it back with a sinking feeling. Fucking Maile. Fucking Torquemada. And fucking Ben-Hassrath with his fucking intercepted correspondence.

"I don't believe I could play this." This is completely and utterly out of her league. The last time Margo held a guitar, Jake had snatched it from her and asked her not to torture the poor thing. She might know her basic chords, and, back in the day, could sing at least a tiny part of Jake's repertoire herself — but her brother was so above and beyond where she would ever be that it seemed like a pointless waste of time to get too much into it. In the universe's allocation of predilections and skills, her brother had gotten all the musical genius in the family, and this had suited her just fine.

"If you prefer a simpler style, I have an old gittern I rarely use these days," Maryden offers, with an expression so skeptical that it becomes abundantly clear to Margo that the only reason the minstrel is wasting her time at all is as a personal favor to Varric. Margo's face must be sufficiently crestfallen that the woman takes pity on her. "Sometimes it matters little what you play, but that your music comes from a truthful place." She gets up and walks away towards the tavern's back room.

As if all of this weren't mortifying enough, the front door opens, and Bull stomps in, Chargers in tow. He makes a beeline for their table. Krem and the other mercs settle at a different spot, which leads Margo to conclude that Bull is about to join Varric and her to talk shop, rather than simply socialize.

"Varric. Blondie. You're already here."

Varric cocks an eyebrow at the Qunari. "Really, Tiny? 'Blondie?' The point of a nickname is that it's distinctive . Otherwise why bother? You're just going to confuse yourself."

Bull shrugs. "I keep them straight just fine. Anyway. We just need Dorian and Solas to show, and we can get to business." He serves himself from their pitcher of ale, finishes half his pint in one draw, and burps dramatically. "Better. Varric, you comin' too?"

Margo shoots a quick look at the dwarf. She would feel infinitely better if he did.

"Nah, Tiny. I'm sticking with the Herald on this one. Take Sera with you."

Bull shakes his head. "Too many elves already. Besides, Sera's great, but she's got a mouth on her. We need to stay innocuous. We can take her up to Redcliffe, but not inside." He turns his attention to Margo. "All right, Blondie. Let's clear the air, yeah? I wasn't sure about you, but so far, you've come through. I've been sitting on that letter — my guys got it off the Vint mage you bedded on the Storm Coast. Took me a bit to put two and two together — you know, same Vint, same gal. I'm guessing he plucked it off you at some point." He leans in, massive forearm muscles rippling under his grayish skin as he folds his hands over the table — a strangely scholarly pose for such a large figure. "You wanna know what happened to him?"

Margo meets the Qunari's eye-patched gaze. "Honestly, Bull? I don't really give a squat." Well, she could be even more specific than that. It would benefit her immensely, as far as her cover is concerned, if the guy were dead. Sorry, Maile, but a witness is a witness. Margo winces internally. When did she get so ruthless?

Bull's chest rumbles with a chuckle. "Loose ends, heh? He's not gonna be your problem anymore. You're welcome."

Margo just nods. What else is there to say?

Maryden saunters back to them with a case in tow. Her eyes glide over Krem at the other table, and she adds a bit of sway to her hips as she makes her way towards them. Krem's expression remains stoic, but the minstrel seems neither offended nor discouraged. She turns to Margo, opens the case, and extracts the instrument that had been concealed inside. It is, by and large, a guitar. It's on the smaller side, with a shorter neck and a slightly different profile to the resonating chamber. The word that Margo's mind conjures from some dusty corner of her memory is "vihuela." Mercifully, it only has six strings. Of course, knowing the correct designation for the instrument isn't going to help her play it.

She takes the instrument awkwardly, and gives the strings a tentative pluck. It is tuned differently, but it's not that far off — she could conceivably re-tune it to a familiar pattern without snapping the catguts.

The next five minutes are utterly painful. Maryden's voice is all honey and perfect pitch, her fingers strumming at her supersized banjo with practiced ease. She tries to teach Margo a few popular songs — they start with something about Andraste's mabari — but it is utterly useless. Margo doesn't have the musical chops to pick up on the chords and transpose them to the vihuela without some kind of annotation — and even if she could, perhaps, reverse engineer it on her own time, she is too damn self-conscious, because at this point, their little group is starting to draw attention. To make matters worse yet, her voice is in a completely different range from what it used to be — it's pitched low, somewhere between an alto and a contralto, with a noticeable rasp that makes singing anything feminine an entirely absurd enterprise. She can carry a tune at least, but the upbeat, crowd-pleasing ballads Maryden suggests to her come out a bit demented.

"I am nowhere near drunk enough for this," Margo groans.

"Blondie, I know you're no bard, that much is clear. Fucking some high-up Orlesian doesn't mean you can sing in a tavern. Different skillsets. Look, don't overthink it. We just need to pass long enough to get into that mage shithole without getting caught and have a backup in case someone calls out the bluff."

Margo exhales, somewhere between relief and irritation. True. They just need to look the part.

She is about to set the guitar back into the case when the door opens to let in Dorian, with Blackwall and Sera closely on the mage's heels. The three seem to be in a heated and not altogether friendly debate over something. They all sport identical expressions of barely contained irritation. Dorian is the only one who seems vaguely amused. Bull gestures them over, and their table suddenly becomes crowded.

Blackwall plops himself down next to Margo, with the sound of creaking leather and clanking metal. The bench under them sags noticeably. "I didn't know you played," he says with a quick glance at the guitar, pale green eyes crinkling at the corners.

"I don't really," Margo retorts dryly. "Not well, at least. But I suppose I better pick it up, and fast."

"Ugh. How hard can it be?" Sera goes through her pockets and extracts a handful of coppers. "You just need more booze. Whatcha having, Beardy?"

"Not the same piss you bought me last time. Pretty much anything but that." Blackwall places a few coins in Sera's outstretched palm. "On me."

Dorian hovers for a few seconds before taking a seat next to Bull. "Do make some room, Qunari. And move your legs. How you manage to take up half of this bench is entirely beyond me."

The Qunari smirks. "There's room in my lap if you're feeling crowded, Dorian."

" Vishante kaffas , half of Haven has been in your lap. It is the definition of crowded. I think I'll pass."

"Suit yourself." Bull leans back, in a pose that signals he is the one presiding over the proceedings. "All right. Who are we missing? Solas?"

Sera, who is bustling back with a tray full of drinks, bread, and some grayish substance that might be cheese, although it could also be clay, makes a face. "Don't hold your breath, big guy. That one's too good to socialize with the rest of us little people. Like you'd see him in a tavern. Bleagh!"

Of course, this is the exact moment when the door opens, and in walks the aforementioned elf. In principle, and on a better day, Margo would be thoroughly amused by the impeccable comedic timing. As it stands, she is too busy trying to negotiate holding the accursed string instrument and receiving, from a very business-minded Blackwall, who has taken it upon himself to distribute the drinks Sera brought, a shot of something that looks like it should spontaneously combust upon contact with the air.

"Bottoms up," Bull orders. And, of course, the entire gallery takes the shot. Margo's eyes meet Dorian's, who cocks an eyebrow and offers a half-shrug. "Barbarian customs," he mouths at her. Margo grins, and knocks back the liquor. At this point, she is happy to reclassify the booze as a palliative.

She watches Solas glide over to their table. The elf hesitates for a few seconds, scanning the available seating. Maryden has left their company to speak with Krem, but the spot she vacated is quickly occupied by Sera, and Solas selects the opposite side, taking a seat next to Dorian at the very edge of the bench. Margo darts him a look, and is greeted by a small bow.

"Good evening," he offers, to no one in particular. "Iron Bull, you asked us to see you."

"Yeah." The Qunari glances at the new addition to their group over Dorian's head. "We'll talk strategy in a minute. But so long as I'm the one in charge of our side of the operation, I like to get to know the people I'm working with."

"You have fought alongside us for some time, Iron Bull," Solas comments, his tone mild. "Is that insufficient?"

The Qunari's expression is amused. "Have a drink, Solas. Unwind a bit."

Margo exhales. This should all feel like relaxed, easy camaraderie, and yet, it does not. There are the clear animosities — it doesn't take any particular brilliance to realize Sera and Solas do not like each other, for example. But aside from the obvious, Margo cannot shake the feeling that half of the people assembled here are sizing each other up through careful, calculated moves and countermoves. And if that weren't complicated enough, there are the emerging entanglements, emotional or otherwise. She watches across the table as Bull reaches for the flagon of beer, "accidentally" brushing his bare forearm against Dorian's shoulder. Never mind that this took quite the gestural detour. Across from her, Varric's head moves infinitesimally every time the tavern door opens, as if he is expecting someone. And Margo herself is carefully avoiding looking anywhere beyond Dorian's left ear.

She is brought out of her uneasy reverie when Varric pushes another shot in her direction. Both Dorian and Solas have availed themselves of glasses of wine. Margo trades the shot for a mug of ale.

"So." Blackwall turns to her, and taps the guitar with a callused finger. "One song."

"Blackwall's right, Blondie. Better be able to fake it."

"I wanna hear a song, too," Sera quips. "Just no elfy shite, yah?"

Screw it. The minstrel is out of earshot, clearly occupied with Krem. Margo takes a long swig of her ale and turns to the instrument. She adjusts the vihuela to a standard guitar tuning. What does she remember? More relevantly, what does she remember that doesn't mention some inconvenient otherworldly things — and that she can actually sing.

"What sort of song are you in the mood for?" she asks the table, mostly to buy herself time. She strums an A7. It sounds like an A7, so there's that, at least.

"Something with soul!" That, of course, is Bull, with a growl on the last word, as he knocks back another shot from a somewhat murky glass.

"How about lurrrvve? Maybe about certain pretty Antivan ambassadors and their clever tongues?" Sera leans forward and flicks her tongue suggestively at Blackwall. The poor man colors under his beard. "That's not appropriate, Sera." He throws a bread crust at the elven archer, which might have flown true if Sera hadn't intercept it in mid-flight and stuffed it into her mouth. "Anyway. Lurv," she says, chewing.

"Any other specifications?"

"Honestly, Prickly, I'd like something optimistic for once."

She looks at Varric, and catches an infinitesimal nod towards the rest of the room. Right. Gauge your audience. Margo tries to think, despite the roaring performance anxiety. On the upside, at this point she is tipsy enough that if she doesn't look at any of them, she can almost fashion the illusion of solitude. Something optimistic, but with soul. A love song would probably go over well, since those tend to be not particularly specific, but she isn't feeling it. Nor do they tend to be optimistic.

She strums a G. Well, no time like the present.

 _"Come gather 'round people  
_ _Wherever you roam... "_

Her voice is more Cohen that Dylan, but she hits the right notes, at least, and after some fumbling, her fingers find the frets easily enough. She shuts everything out except for the memory of her brother singing on her couch, somewhere between one bad break up and the next.

 _"... And don't speak too soon.  
_ _For the wheel's still in spin.  
_ _And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'.  
_ _For the loser now will be later to win…"_

And it might be the booze, but midway through the song, Margo decides that, while she'll never sing opera, Maile's voice is, in fact, interesting in its own way. She can carry a tune. There's a slightly wistful quality to the raspy contralto, without being full-on maudlin. With the right repertoire, this can be serviceable. And her fingers, while rusty and tentative at first, benefit from Maile's sharper reflexes. But most importantly, she suddenly understands Varric's comment about the importance of reading the audience. Because, in the end, it's the song's message that seems to hit a chord with the assembled company. She changes a couple of verses on the fly.

 _"Come nobles and counselors, please heed the call …  
_ _Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall.  
_ _For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled.  
_ _There's a battle outside and it's ragin'... "_

By the end of the second verse, she gets a few approving cheers from not just the table, but the other patrons. And by the third, there are at least three voices that pick up the chorus. She recognizes Sera's: it's a tad off key, but what it lacks in tune it more than makes up in volume and enthusiasm. Blackwall's next to her is a deep bass. Varric's is more of a quiet hum.

 _" For the times they are a-changin'. "_

Margo wishes Evie were around. In a sense, the song feels like it should be addressed to her. However tenuous their recent victories, they are something to celebrate.

She finishes abruptly, without any musical flourish to ease off, and looks up. Dorian grins, and starts clapping demonstratively, and then the rest of her table joins in. There are even a few approving whistles from the audience. Blackwall smiles from under his beard, puts his hand on her shoulder, and gives it a friendly squeeze.

Margo glances at Varric, and gives him a grateful nod. "Who's it by?" he asks, eyes glinting with keen interest. "Never heard that one before."

"Who gives a shite, Varric? Proper people song, that."

Margo busies herself with her ale to wash down the nervousness, and buy herself some time to respond. "My brother used to sing it," she says finally, hoping the evasion will be enough. "That's how I learned it." All other things being equal, always better to lie by saying the truth.

She looks up again, and notices Dorian's and Solas's gazes on her. Dorian's eyes twinkle with curiosity, and his Dali-esque mustache twitches in suppressed amusement. She casts a quick glance at Solas. His expression is harder to read — he keeps his face neutral but holds her gaze for a little too long, some kind of complicated question there that Margo isn't sure she can answer.

"You know what, Blondie?" Bull pours himself another ale. "We just might pass."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by snoufleur fat. Because if you can use fade-touched snoufleur skin, the fat should be put to good use as well._

 _Next up: Off to Redcliffe_

Also, many thanks for those of you who leave reviews and comments. Even if I cannot respond to guest post, please know that I appreciate them enormously. Buckle in, folks. We're in for a stretch of drama. But the next one or two chapters are relatively speaking fluffy.


	37. Chapter 37: Just Pretend

**FOLKS, my apologies, this chapter somehow got lost in the shuffle. This chapter happens right before "Spot the Spook". I am posting it now, and I know it's out of order, but feel free to read it to fill in some more details. It's mostly fun/light-hearted.**

In which the team discusses the concept of free will, and tries on their new masks.

* * *

 **Chapter 37: Just Pretend**

Their departure gets pushed up by one day, and they leave at dusk the next evening. Their contingent, in addition to the ground team of four, includes a support group that will stay outside of Redcliffe to gather whatever mages they can round up, convey messages to headquarters, and act as backup if shit hits the fan. In addition to the Chargers and Sera, they have a new companion — an enchanter by the name of Ellandra, a somewhat austere woman Margo immediately takes a liking to, who volunteered "ethnographic details" — meaning intel — on Redcliffe. On the first march, Margo learns about phylacteries from her, and she spends the rest of the day feeling vaguely nauseated and not a little furious on the mages' behalf. The Chantry certainly likes its leashes, chemical or otherwise.

The journey, however, is harrowing, and it leaves little time to socialize. Whatever political choreography is happening around the Templars — something about an Orlesian noble throwing in his support with the Inquisition — Evie and her team had to leave in a hurry, and in secret. Bull, apparently under Leliana's orders, pushes his team to cover the distance in three days to beat the news of Evie's decision. They walk for forteen, fifteen hours straight, with only a brief stop for lunch and the occasional skirmish, and Margo simply collapses on her bedroll, with barely enough energy to skim a chapter from the Genitivi — an instructive read, but she's barely managing to keep focus — and pop a small lichen strip into her mouth before closing her eyes. She is too exhausted to dream.

The plan is relatively simple, and by the time they reach the outskirts of Redcliffe, Margo's heard it so many times that if someone were to wake her up in the middle of the night she could recite it verbatim. Get past the guards at the northern entrance to the village — the one with the new ferry over the lake, apparently added because the south gate is blocked by a particularly unpleasant Fade rift — without drawing attention to Dorian. The minstrel disguise, carefully distributed among them, is as equally designed to grant them access as it is to deflect attention from the Tevinter mage. Bull speculates that if Alexius gets wind of his former mentee's return, Dorian will be summoned into his presence, and there will be little chance for them to reconnoiter without scrutiny. The advantage of the minstrel disguise, in addition to appearing innocuous, is that it is so damn absurd. No one will suspect a self-respecting Tevinter altus — apparently the correct title for Dorian — to pretend to be an itinerant entertainer. Or so the theory goes. After they're in, the goal is to set up in the tavern, identify the dissidents, and smuggle them out.

"You know Alexius will eventually discover that I have wandered back," Dorian cautions, as they share their dinner of dried meat and bread. "We will need a plausible story once we are inside."

Bull nods. "Yeah. I've thought of it. We're gonna bring the costuming down a notch once we're in place. When your Vint magister shows up, you're gonna say we're with you and that you've returned to the fold. As far as he's concerned, I'm your Tal-Vashoth bodyguard." He gestures at Solas. "He's your manservant, or whatever. And she's your entertainer."

Margo glances at Solas. His expression seems placid enough, but his eyes are thunderous in a suddenly ashen face. "I believe 'slave' would be more accurate, would it not?"

"Easy there, Solas." Bull's voice is deceptively light. "It's just pretend. You think it doesn't chafe to introduce myself as a Tal-Va-fucking-shoth?"

"I gather you prefer the status of a mindless thrall, subservient to an ideology that suppresses any expression of autonomy?"

Margo blinks. There is almost something a little feral under Solas's civil tone.

Bull's response is deceptively nonchalant. "Do you really think you're free, Solas? What about that guy we passed in the Crossroads, the one who's barely able to scrape by and feed his kids. Think he's free? What about the cute redhead who offered to take you out back for a couple of coppers when we were getting the waterskins filled? She free, too?"

"I do believe that one was exercising a great deal of free will," Dorian interjects with truly spectacular poise. Not even a twitch of a smile. Margo focuses on nibbling on her bread crust and pretends that the pebbles stuck in the sole of her boot are truly fascinating geological finds. She had missed that particular episode.

"They still are capable of choice within the range of possibilities afforded to them. Your religion would deny them that."

Margo's eyes drift to the elf. To say that he looks peeved would be like saying that strychnine causes breathing difficulties. Also, his ears have gone pink.

"Watch out, Bull." Sera stretches out next to Margo by the campfire and takes a huge bite from a strip of jerky. She speaks around the food, so the words come out a little muffled. "You're about to be told how the elfy elves are the most 'auto-mo-nous' elves that have ever elved in Thedas. Because, elven glory, yah?" She accompanies this by a rather lewd gesture miming a giant phallus.

"Sera, I said nothing about elves. Although, why do you hold our people in such low regard?"

"Just cuz I don't whinge and moan about how we were so grand once? Egh. You do that well enough for the both of us, yah? Got better things."

Margo sighs. Oy. This is going to go splendidly.

"What about you, Blondie? You think you're free?"

Margo starts. Considering Maile's cumulative clusterfuck of bad decisions, made in spectacularly shitty circumstances, she isn't sure whose position she finds more compelling. But this isn't just idle philosophical conversation. This feels like staking political claims over bloody conflicts that are neither abstract nor ancient history. She considers how to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of the two irreconcilable frameworks.

"Depends. Are we talking about freedom to , or freedom from ?" She gets two very speculative sets of eyes trained on her for her trouble. Though, one and a half set of eyes would be more accurate. Right. It is unlikely that the members of her new social circle are interested in hearing about Immanuel Kant, or the long history of her own world's debates on the hoary topic of individual liberty and free will. She hugs her knees to her chest, suddenly heartsick with her hopeless dislocation. Dorian and Sera are waiting expectantly. All they're missing is a bowl of popcorn between them. But the other two sport remarkably similar expressions that suggest that her answer might matter for their further classificatory filing of her. Not to mention that anything she says is just going to get weaponized in their irresolvable debate.

Margo doesn't like it, but there's nothing to be done about it. Better suck it up.

"You're both assuming that there is a particular kind of 'self' making a choice," she finally says, because extricating herself from this discussion entirely seems like the best possible approach, and the only strategy that comes to mind is to throw the "no-self" kitchen sink at them... and then run. "Whether it's autonomous or predetermined, you're assuming a willful person at the center." She stifles a yawn, and turns to Bull. "Can spirits be part of the Qun?"

That seems to throw the Qunari for a loop. He frowns. "They're spirits , Blondie. What are you sayin'?"

"Exactly. They are their respective natures, no more, no less. They cannot be other than what they are. Doesn't the Qun argue the same thing about everyone else? So isn't excluding them illogical?"

He looks uneasy. Ha. Got one. Margo catches Solas's eyes on her, and the look he is giving her is… She's not sure what it is, but cats and canaries come to mind. She turns to face him. Not so fast, buddy. "Solas, from what I understand, the Tranquil are completely rational." She wants to say something to the effect that they are perfect embodiments of the idea of "rational choice," but decides the elf probably doesn't want a rant on Adam Smith. "They are capable of making clear-headed, logical decisions. They are not influenced by social mores or by their own passions. In this, they are perfect examples of autonomous individuality. Yet, you consider them damaged beyond repair."

"They are severed from the Fade, lethallan… They desire nothing, and hence their full ability to choose is taken from them by definition." The elf is frowning. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't that.

"Are you suggesting that it is our desires that constitute our freedom to choose?"

"Of course. One may choose, or choose not to choose. One can go with or against one's desires. That, in itself, is a form of freedom."

This amuses Bull to no end. "What was that, Solas? 'Cause you just sounded like a Qunari for a second there."

"But desires are neither autonomous nor permanent." Margo can't help herself. She smiles, probably a bit slyly. "Let's take an example. You might want… a frilly cake." Solas's eyes widen at this suggestion. "The only reason you would want it is that you have a preexisting idea of it. Maybe you've tried one before and remember enjoying it. Or maybe you want it because someone reminded you of it just now. But by tomorrow, something might change, and you will no longer want any frilly cakes. Or you will realize that your memory of them was faulty, and that frilly cakes are, in fact, not to your liking at all. Or that they tend to be accompanied by tea, and it's not worth the trouble. And if the one doing the wanting — and hence the choosing — is unreliable over time, then how is desire a good indicator for any kind of individuality or autonomy?"

"I assure you that my desires are not so inconsistent or variable as that. Lethallan."

Margo narrows her eyes at the strange way in which he tacked on the endearment — somewhere between an emphasis and an afterthought.

"And I do believe my memory remains adequate. For instance, I still recall our discussion of 'sophistry.' Though I do enjoy the reminder." He delivers all that in a mellow tone, but with a rather pointed look.

"To be clear, we're still talking about frilly cakes, yeah?" Bull interjects.

"S'over, you two. She owned both of ya." Sera grins. "There's another one with a clever tongue! Right, elfy?" Sera turns to Solas with a sarcastic smirk. It's met with profound peevishness. "Pffft, don't pout — clever tongue's a good thing."

Solas colors slightly.

Margo feels the heat in her own cheeks, and decides that the safest place to look is the campfire. Right. Oxidation — fascinating process, that.

"Sera, you are, as usual, taking the conversation in a distinctly questionable direction…"

"How would ya know where I'm takin' it? Maybe cuz you went there first! Ha!" Sera bursts out laughing.

Margo decides that this is her cue to fade out. She bids them goodnight, climbs into her bedroll, and drifts off to the sounds of another debate: this one between Bull and Dorian, about the relative merits of different Tevinter adult entertainment establishments.

"Minstrels, heh? Where d'ye say ye come from?"

The Redcliffe guard eyes them with unconcealed skepticism. Margo gives her a friendly grin, but it doesn't seem to assuage the woman's doubts one bit.

They do make quite the quartet. Margo readjusts the marigold behind her ear, which she added to her disguise at Sera's insistence. "Makes you look less… sharp and pointy." The poor flower is probably wilting from all the standing around in the heat. Next to her, Bull, in something that can only be described as sirwal pants so red and so wide you could use them for dead reckoning, and tucked into a pair of fussy leather boots with turquoise beading and upturned toes, crosses his arms over his massive chest. It is strange to see him without a sword, and he is clearly unsure of what to do with his hands. Sera's network is meant to smuggle their armor and weaponry under the cover of night, but until then, the task is to look like they're there to entertain.

They certainly look entertaining. Every time Bull turns his head, there is a melodic tinkle from the two silver bells hanging from the tips of his horns.

Solas is not faring much better. He looks like he escaped from a period piece on Robin Hood — the kind that's so low budget that the costumes were donated by the local charitable organization from whatever remained of last year's Halloween discards. The lime green hat with the long bird feather is an especially inspired touch — though the color does nothing for his complexion. Margo tries her damn best not to look at him, because every time she does, she is overwhelmed by the desire to sing " We're men, we're men in tights! " "I think this is actually an improvement from the usual, Solas," Dorian commented on seeing him. "It has the merit of having identifiable colors." To be fair to Solas, the elf has taken it all in stride with remarkable self-confidence. Also, it turns out that he can juggle surprisingly well — although Margo is fairly certain that he cheats.

Of the four of them, Dorian is by far the most at ease with the charade. His outfit is not a particularly radical departure from his usual clothes — although he added a cape — but what makes the costume is the large lute strapped to his back instead of his usual staff. A tad more kohl, a dab more hair pomade, and he looks like the type of 18th century hooligan who performs scathing political songs to rouse the peasantry and terrorizes the burghers with his indiscriminate seduction of their significant others.

Margo's outfit would make any Renaissance fair enthusiast proud. At least it's not a dress. The bodice and the loose linen shirt beneath leave rather little to the imagination. They're over leather leggings — thank you Unspecified Deity and Josephine's more merciful streak — even if they are, in Margo's humble opinion, of the overly form-fitting persuasion. What saves her from looking indecent — and parachutes her closer to the romanticism of the starving artist — is the fact that she does seem somewhat undernourished. "You have lovely collarbones, if you do not mind me saying. We should show them off!" Josephine had entirely too much fun outfitting them all, fussing over their costumes like they were getting ready for a masquerade ball and not sneaking into a potentially hostile fortified townlet. What Margo hadn't bargained for is the rather liberal neckline.

"Chin up, Blondie," Bull had rumbled, with an appreciative chuckle. "If they're staring at your tits, they're not paying attention to your singing." Timeless wisdom, right there.

Margo readjusts the vihuela on her back.

"Most recently, from Val Chevin, my dear lady," Dorian's voice takes on the sing-song quality of a born bullshitter, "but before that, from all four corners of Thedas, and dare I say, beyond."

The guard blinks. "What'ye sayin', boy? There ain't nothin' beyond Thedas, there ain't."

"Hey," Bull's voice is deep and a little velvety. "How's the atmosphere in the village? People gettin' bored yet?"

The woman shrugs. "Bored? There's no time to get bored." She sighs. "Bored's all well and good when ye don't have half of feckin' Tevinter strollin' around like they own the place."

"Yeah, that's what I'm sayin'. Tensions high? People need to let off some steam? I'm telling you, what you need is some good quality entertainment. And we are... Good. Quality. Entertainment."

They go around like that for a couple more times, but what seals the deal in the end is Margo noticing a heat rash along the guardswoman's neck, where the skin chafes from the perspiration and the friction from her armor's collar. Margo fishes out a salve from her pack — the same diaper cream formula she used to make Bull's eye-patch poultice — and presses it into the woman's hand.

"For your neck," she says. "Works like a charm."

"Ye tryin' to bribe me, lass?"

"Bribe you?" Margo tries to adopt a look of wide-eyed innocence. "I'd never try that. Oh, and don't put the potato starch on it. It makes it worse in the long run."

The guardswoman shrugs, opens the jar, sniffs it, and slathers the poultice on her skin. The relief on her face tells Margo that they're in. "Don't ye go tellin' anyone it was me who let ye through, ye hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bull confirms. And then, they're on the ferry, which is really a glorified raft made of mismatched logs tied together with some alarmingly fraying rope. A fisherman type, who is missing a few teeth, but makes up for it with the most impressive pair of whiskers Margo has seen on someone who isn't a lynx, pushes them towards the Redcliffe docks with an expression of cosmic ennui. He barely even glances at them — never mind their ridiculous outfits. Another day, another copper.

Margo, who is wedged between Solas and Dorian on one side of the raft, to counterbalance the Qunari on the other, tilts her chin in the direction of their self-appointed Charon, and mumbles "tough crowd" under her breath. Dorian's jaw twitches, and Margo decides he is probably biting the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh.

Bull keeps peering into the water with a look of intense — if alarmed — concentration. "I could swear I saw another one…" he mumbles.

"Fish?" Dorrian ventures.

"Nah, not fish. Fish wouldn't be a problem… Too many legs..."

A movement on her other side catches her attention. Solas, who has tipped the absurd green hat forward at a rakish angle, flutters his fingers in the direction of her ear.

"If I may...?"

Before Margo can figure out what he wants, he reaches and plucks the long-suffering flower from her hair — somehow managing to brush the back of his hand against her bare shoulder and to sweep his fingers over the curve of her ear in one fell swoop. Her skin tingles in the wake of his touch. Margo has the ungenerous suspicion that he added some magical special effect — probably in retaliation for the previous night's "sophistry." Bastard. She narrows her eyes at the elf and is met with an innocent look. And then he passes his hand over the flower, and it revives a bit, looking mildly less worn out by its new decorative status. He tucks it back behind her ear.

"There. Much improved."

Margo cocks an eyebrow. "Did you somehow stabilize it? Or will it still keep wilting?"

He almost doesn't smile. "I do not perform miracles, lethallan. It will certainly keep wilting."

Dorian, on the other side of her, is overcome by a coughing fit that sounds as fake as his lute. "You could freeze it solid, and dampen the chill effect with a ward, Solas…"

"I could," the elf agrees easily.

The undercurrent of flirtation is fairly obvious, but something about it makes Margo cross. Perhaps it's the fact that he seems more comfortable with the underdeterminacy of it all: as long as nothing is acknowledged, it's all fair game, apparently. Or perhaps it is the fact that they are wearing masks — or, to be more precise, disguises. Everything becomes a little bit more facile once spared the burden of being oneself — whatever that might mean in all of their cases. She turns to face the elf. His eyes fix on hers, and he holds her gaze.

"Nothing is real, everything is permitted, hmm?" Margo's tone is light, but she stares back, fed up with being furtive about the whole thing.

A trace of a flinch. But then Solas regroups, and there is a wry cheekiness to his expression. And perhaps the edge of a challenge.

Bull gives Margo a brief glance before returning to scrutinizing the waters. "Nice one, Blondie. Now you sound like a proper bard."

"We're here," their taciturn Charon announces suddenly, and a few seconds later, the raft rams into a fishing dock.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, and the wonders of diaper rash cream._


	38. Chapter 38: Spot the Spook

_In which the team enters Redcliffe, and Margo meets a knight, a tranquil, and a stool pigeon._

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 **Chapter 38: Spot the Spook**

Their light-hearted mood does not last. Redcliffe feels wrong . Margo has never been in a place under military occupation, but this is the first association that comes to her mind as they slowly make their way up the steep incline towards the local tavern.

"Was it like this the last time you were here?" Bull asks quietly. He and Dorian walk side by side, with Margo and Solas bringing up the back.

"No." Dorian's tone is dry. "It was distinctly less…" He seems to search for the adequate word. "Dour," he finally offers. Margo would have gone with "terrifying."

The local inhabitants give them furtive if cautiously curious glances and scurry on. The conversations are hushed. Military types with piercing, suspicious eyes walk in small groups of three or four, slowing down to eavesdrop on the locals' mutterings — although Margo isn't sure that blatantly standing there and staring at people as they talk counts as "eavesdropping," exactly.

There is an incredible amount of mages — judging by their dress, at least. But all of them seem nervous and ragged, eye sockets bruised with lack of sleep — and sometimes just bruised. And none of them carry staves.

But the social situation isn't the only thing that's cause for concern. The first time Margo notices the strange effect is when she passes through what she originally thought was a swarm of fruit flies — except the hypothetical drosophila turn out, upon closer inspection, to be tiny, immaterial yellow particles of… something. It's not a something that Margo has ever encountered before, but as she walks through it — a stupid decision, in retrospect — she is suddenly struck by the incredible slowness of her movements. An uncanny feeling of unreality settles over her — as if she were walking through a dream. But not a dream of the Fade variety — something more out of control than that. Her eyes drift out of focus, and she blinks several times, trying to get her vision to cooperate.

Cool fingers wrap around her wrist, and she is yanked out of the uncanny reality warp, only to stumble into Solas — who, apparently, was the one doing the yanking.

"Oof," Margo mutters, righting herself. "What was that?" She tries to turn around to take a closer look at the pocket of misbehaving fairy dust but is apprehended by the elf once again. Solas puts his hand on her lower back and pushes just enough to keep her from slowing down.

He turns to her with a smile that Margo suspects is not for her benefit. "Keep walking, lethallan. We do not wish to attract more attention than we already have." His voice is barely above a whisper.

Indeed, they do not. Two soldiers in unfamiliar but expensive armor, their stares heavy with distrust, follow their progress from the shade of a nearby awning. Margo drapes her arm over Solas's shoulder, leans in, and puts her lips against his ear. Right. Might as well play the part of the carefree, flirtatious doxy of the singing persuasion.

"Fade pocket?" she whispers.

If Solas is surprised by any part of this maneuvering, he doesn't let on — his hand moves over to her hip, and he pulls her closer. He mirrors her strategy. While the feel of his lips against her ear sends a shiver down her spine, the words themselves are more than sobering.

"Unfamiliar magic. Damaged Veil."

The local watering hole, called the Gull and Lantern, contains an assortment of more of the same contingent — mostly mages, in various stages of sober terror and drunken despondency, and a small but colorful collection of watchful, quiet characters who sit in corners and appear to be doing some very active listening. Their merry band of four settles at a table within earshot of an angry-looking mage who is spewing a clearly unsolicited diatribe about the Chantry, the Templars, and the Inquisition to her silent companion. The man nods and grunts at the appropriate times but doesn't seem to be paying much attention — he is too busy watching the room in general and the newcomers in particular.

Bull selects a seat with his back against the far wall — or, to be more precise, against a gigantic bear pelt — and a good view of the common room. Solas and Dorian take the chairs kitty-corner to his, and Margo is left sitting with her back to the rest of the tavern, which is not a comfortable proposition by any stretch of the imagination. The hairs on her nape feel like they're considering evolving into prehensile extensions just to compensate for all the hostile staring.

Bull leans forward, pitching his voice such that it carries to their small circle, but not beyond. "All right, here's the strategy. We're gonna divide the tasks. Dorian, take a look at the patrons, see if anyone seems familiar. Even if it's just vaguely familiar — say, you saw them last time you were passin' through — still counts. Solas, can you get a read on the mages? And the others? Give me a sense of how skilled they are, that sort of thing?"

Solas inclines his head slightly. "It would be imprecise at best, but I should manage to assess the strength of their connection to the Fade."

Bull nods, satisfied. "Works for me. Blondie, you're on logistics. Go chat up the barkeep, see if there's a room available — nothing fancy, but don't let them give you one with only blind walls. We'll need at least two exits. Find out whatever the barkeep's willing to share, but don't overpush. And see if they got a minstrel working the place already."

Margo stands up from her chair with a distinct feeling of relief. At least if she's mobile, maybe the sensation that multiple someones are trying to drill a hole in her back by staring at it intently will dissipate. On her way down from the platform, she passes a barmaid, who gives her a strange look but proceeds to sashay her way to the table of "minstrels" with a fairly convincing rendition of a Mona Lisa smile.

The tavern looks like something born of the utopian pipe dream of an optimistic but mathematically challenged local merchant whose finances had stretched thin by the time the enormous building had been erected, and who had said "screw it" and IKEA'd the furniture. The bar is a set of trestles covered with rough planks in lieu of a proper counter.

Margo makes her way between the patrons, noticing that conversations hush as she passes. The looks she gets are a strange mix of curiosity, surprise, and nervousness — which either means that her disguise is not quite having the desired effect, or that there is something about her presumed social role that makes the locals fidgety. She finds neither eventuality particularly comforting.

The bartender is a short, corpulent, bald fellow of indeterminate age, with light, expressionless eyes. When he glances at Margo, his attention first settles on her ears, then on the neck of the vihuela poking out from behind her shoulder. And then on the expanse of exposed skin. Overview completed, he returns to wiping a perfectly dry glass.

"Good evening," Margo tries. She's not sure how she's supposed to address him. Ser? Serah? Messere? She's heard variations of all of these, but their corresponding social maps are murky at best. Maybe just "barkeep" would do?

"And what are you supposed to be? Some kind of minstrel?"

Margo nods. "That's right! My companions and I just arrived. Do you have a room available?"

He squints, clearly deciding where to locate her on the sliding scale of possible extortion. "I might. Whose are you, anyway?"

Margo blinks. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said," the bartender repeats with infinite patience, "whose are you?"

What the hell is this? Is he assuming that she is a servant? Or a slave, perhaps? Or is it that bards are assigned to a particular noble that hires them? Unless the man is asking about her qualifications — whom she studied under. "I'm not sure I understand your question, good sir." She tries for a winsome smile.

The bartender sets down the long-suffering glass and fixes Margo with a very unpleasantly speculative gaze. "Just arrived, did you? Redcliffe's closed for visitors. Got the writ of authorization, then?"

Margo swallows. If there ever were a textbook example of a collaborator, this guy is it. But that particular insight doesn't solve the immediate problem. Margo briefly considers whether Alexius has instituted a visa system. She dismisses the possibility. If such a thing were in place, it is unlikely that the guard would have let them in quite so easily. What, then…?

The bartender looks at her with impatient irritation. "You daft, lass? If you want to play the Gull and Lantern, you'll need to show me your writ of authorization. Magister's orders. You got in this far, so whose are you? Who issued your writ?"

Aha. Margo files this information for later discussion with the others. So, some kind of licensing system for musicians: either to suppress unwanted political commentary or to make the general atmosphere in the town even more oppressive than it already is.

Margo considers her options. She could try for dumb blonde to weedle more information out of the fellow, but her blasted voice — not to mention current outfit — is too far on the femme fatale side of the spectrum to pull it off. After a brief moment of hesitation, she props her elbows on the counter, and leans in. Her antics get the desired result, at least, and Margo feels a grim kind of satisfaction from the fact that the barkeep's eyes travel in the designated direction before he looks back up. His expression, however, is one of undiluted suspicion. As in, nice view, now where's the other shoe?

"Look." Margo lowers her voice to an insinuating murmur, implying that she is about to share a big, and potentially embarrassing secret. If she is right in gauging this particular audience, Stool Pigeon here shouldn't be able to resist the prospect of reportable gossip. "The boss got a summons. And he's not exactly forthcoming about where his contracts come from. You know, in case the rest of us poach it from under him and dump his overbearing ass."

Whatever else might be going on with the local drink-serving snitch, crude class antagonism is something he can get behind. "Yeah. Reason I work for myself now."

Oh, sure. Just with a little extra moonlighting for the local Gestapo, but details, right? Margo keeps her expression firmly within the spectrum of class solidarity.

"Who's your boss, anyway?"

She tilts her head towards where the rest of the team is sitting. "See that unaccommodating-looking horned fellow right over there?" It is fortunate that Bull has removed the little bells from his horns — hard to be intimidated by someone who tinkles at every movement, even if that someone is seven feet tall and might give an assault tank a run for its money.

The barkeep chokes out an impressed sort of noise and glances back at her, with another not particularly discreet look at her cleavage. Well, whatever distracts him from her bluffing. "Yeesh, lass. Wouldn't wanna cross that. How'd you end up with one of 'em ox-men, anyway?"

Margo shrugs. "Bad luck, I guess. What's your name?"

"Lloyde. With an 'e.'"

Margo has no idea why it seems to matter to Stool Pigeon how his name gets spelled, but she lets it be. " He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow " and all that. "Lloyde, then. Do you think you can put us up? I hate going back to the boss with bad news. That won't go well for me."

He clucks somewhat sympathetically. "Beats you, don't he? You know, fine lass like yourself, I could find you something to do around here."

Margo summarily ignores the leery come-on qua job offer and shrugs. "Wish that I could, but you know how these things go. Can't stand the idea of staying in one place."

"Suit yourself, then. A room you say? How many, four? All I got is something on the top floor — not much to look at, and it's got mice in the walls."

Margo nods. "Does it have a window, at least?"

"No windows, unless you count the roof hatch."

"Does it open?" She leans forward and waves her hand at her companions. "They don't exactly bathe, you know."

That garners her no sympathy, but the barkeep nods.

She smiles at him. "Guess that'll do. But we aren't wealthy."

The Stool Pigeon makes a face. "Figures. Well, you tell your boss that if he wants it, it's three silvers a night, all paid up front."

Margo narrows her eyes. Not bargaining with this guy would be criminal. "You know that's steep, right? For an attic room with no windows?"

He crosses his pudgy arms over his chest. "Roof access."

"Mice in the walls."

"It's 'cause it's warm. Heat travels up."

"So it's sweltering hot to boot? One and a half."

Lloyde-with-an-e — chuckles, gives Margo's shoulders and decollete a good, long ogle, and says, "Fine. For you, two silvers."

Margo nods and asks about the competition. Lloyde the Leering Stool Pigeon shakes his head. "No one's been playing since the other gal that worked here got kicked out for 'agitating.' That's when the magister decided you lot needed an authorization."

Margo tries to determine how the official restrictions might be finagled. "So, what are the rules, then?"

Lloyde proceeds to check off items on his fingers. His voice suggests that he might be quoting from memory. "'No singing. No playing instruments, recitin' poetry, or talking demonstratively in an inflammatory manner.'"

"'Inflammatory?'" Margo asks. She is fairly certain that the irascible mage's diatribes against the Chantry and associated organizations might count as "inflammatory" in certain circles.

"'Inciting national strife,'" Lloyde recites by rote.

Aha. So, essentially, critiquing Tevinter. "Is that it?"

Lloyde gives her a suspicious little look. "No whistling."

Margo promises to return with the money and makes her way towards the rest of her team. In many ways, this is working out in their favor. Since they do not have a writ, they cannot perform, and if they cannot perform, they cannot be called out as fakes.

In the time that it takes her to negotiate with Lloyde, the tavern fills up. She jostles between small knots of people — most of them mages, but there are other, seemingly magically neutral civilians. A few new additions draw her attention. One is a dark-haired man standing somewhat awkwardly between the foyer and the main room. He wears the robes of a mage but holds himself differently from the others. In fact, he is the only person that she has seen so far who isn't telegraphing terrified despair, hostile suspicion, or drunken belligerence. He seems… remarkably content.

And then, of course, Margo notes the scar on his forehead and freezes in place. Someone bumps into her, and she apologizes distractedly before forcing herself to stop staring and start moving. So that's what a regular Tranquil brand looks like. It's the same pattern as Evie's — though the Herald's is smaller, not to mention fainter. This, whatever it is, is a bona fide cattle brand.

The other newcomer to draw Margo's attention is so profoundly out of place that she has to blink twice before she decides that she isn't hallucinating him. The man puts her in mind of one of those children's visual games: "spot the thing that doesn't belong." Well, spotted. It's not just the knight regalia, complete with a worn breastplate embossed with the head of something that could, if she were to squint, be interpreted as a lion — though could as easily be a very unkempt scientist on the verge of a ground-breaking discovery. It's that the owner of said breastplate is absurdly, almost obnoxiously handsome. The sort of blonde, square-jawed, even-featured handsome that might have your Baba say, "Ay, ay, ay, little thistle, not all is gold that glitters. A girl's not a magpie, hmm?" And then cluck with barely concealed amusement. The fellow's good looks are somewhat tarnished by a layer of road grime.

Margo frowns. Whatever Ser Knight is doing in Redcliffe, he doesn't seem to be particularly cognizant of or intrigued by the current political climate. He looks around with an air of barely contained impatience and just strolls over to the bar with a grim set to his jaw — like someone on a Serious Quest . Margo watches him engage Lloyde the Leery Stool Pigeon in conversation. She turns away and rejoins the others.

She arrives in the middle of a quiet debate.

"Hmm. What about the redhead over there — third table from the door?" Bull is sitting in a relaxed pose, ankle over knee, a mug of ale held in a loose grip over his thigh.

"Doubtful," Solas volunteers, with a quick glance at Margo. There is something a little mischievous in his eyes, and his gaze lingers a tad beyond merely polite.

"All right. Dorian, your turn."

Margo sends a mental prayer to whomever might be listening that the game they're playing is closer to "Spot the Spook" than to "Who Would You Rather."

"The knight who just came in," Dorian says without hesitation.

Bull narrows his eye at the mage. "Really, Vint? The blond? C'mon, you can do better than that."

Dorian shrugs noncommittally. Margo looks between the three specimens and decides two things. First, that she misses Sera. And second, that they are not paying her enough for this shit.

"Bull?" To be fair to the Qunari, his attention switches swiftly, and there is nothing lazy or distracted about his gaze. He is all there. Mildly reassured by this, Margo quickly relates her new intel, and requests additional funds to pay for the room. Bull counts out the silvers and hands her a small purse.

"All right, Blondie. There's enough here for three days. Better get settled."

When Margo stands up from her chair, she freezes. Her alchemy satchel is missing. She almost swears out loud, but catches herself at the very last moment. Instead, she grips the coin purse tightly and makes it back to Lloyde, panic pulsing in her temples as she walks.

It's not that the satchel had anything valuable to anyone but herself. It did, however, contain all of her lichen.

She pays for their room in a state of numb, unfocused anxiety, then takes a look around, trying to spot the cutpurse — futile as the exercise might be. The only obviously shady characters are the unconvincingly disguised secret police — and her own team.

As she scans the crowd, Margo notices that the blond knight from earlier, who has occupied a small table in the corner of the room, is gawking at her like she is the second coming of Andraste. She frowns, trying to parse the meaning of this bizarre behavior. He stares. Passes his hand over his face. Blinks vigorously. Rubs his eyes again, and then stares some more with an expression of such profound awe that Margo takes a look behind her in case Andraste is standing right there, ordering a drink. The knight, in the meantime, makes to stand up, then plops back down and returns to his utterly incomprehensible gawking.

Margo decides to leave Lancelot to his insanity and walks back to the others to get a sense of what their strategy might be now that the singing is firmly — and mercifully — off the table.

"Excuse me?" Someone brushes her arm. She turns, half-expecting the demented knight, but instead comes face to face with the Tranquil. "I am sorry to bother you," the man states, in a tone that suggests no such sentiment. And, in fact, suggests no sentiment at all.

"Hello," Margo tries. The Tranquil's lack of affect is disconcerting, but she forces her face into a friendly smile.

"Thank you for speaking with me. I know that my tone sometimes produces negative responses. Based on your paleness and dilated pupils I inferred that you are in distress." He extends his hand. Margo looks down. Her heart skips at the sight of her lost satchel. "I saw a man take this from you. He dropped it by the door. I therefore concluded that perhaps your emotional state was produced by the loss of your purse. Was I correct?"

Margo nods vigorously. "Yes! Yes, thank you so much!" She grabs the satchel, but even before she has the chance to look inside, the tentative hopefulness dissipates. It is way too light. She checks anyway. There is nothing left except for some botanical dust.

The tranquil tilts his head in a curiously avian gesture, and peers into her face. "Your emotional predicament has not been solved. It was the contents you cared about, not the purse itself?"

Margo sighs. "Yes. But… thank you anyway. I'm still glad to have it returned. Did you happen to see who took it off me?"

The tranquil nods. "I did. You were staring at me when one of the Tevinter men collided with you. He has left since."

Margo flushes, but forces the embarrassment down. There is no trace of judgement in the Tranquil's voice — just neutral observation. "I guess it serves me right for staring, huh?"

The Tranquil's gaze is placid. "There is no reason to connect the two events beyond simple opportunity. The theft is not a retribution for your curiosity. I am Clemence."

"Margo," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"Magister Alexius does not approve of those without magic, like you and me. He says all Tranquil must leave Redcliffe, but who would take us in?"

Margo frowns. "So where do the Tranquil go, then?"

Clemence clasps his hands in front of him, but not, seemingly, in a gesture of nervousness. His bodily movements appear deliberately choreographed — as if he knows that standing too still will produce more discomfort for his interlocutors and introduces artificial fidgeting. Because it carries no emotional reference, the effect is only more unsettling.

"I am unsure. Without an obvious destination, I have chosen to remain. There are few of us still here."

Margo forces herself not to get distracted by Clemence's scripted movements and flat tone and focuses on his words. "How many of you were here originally? And how long ago did Alexius start driving your people out?"

Clemence pauses, his face going completely still. "Fifty-four in total. Tranquil from several Circles congregated in Redcliffe. Magister Alexius arrived at nightfall two days after we retreated from the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It has been one month and ten days."

"And how many remain?"

Another short pause. "As of last week, aside from me, there were three others. I have not observed Lydia in two days and therefore suspect that she may be gone as well."

Margo frowns. Something doesn't quite add up. She has heard nothing about fifty-four Tranquil wandering around the Hinterlands. None have come to Haven. Cassandra or Varric have not mentioned any actually existing Tranquil — even in light of their discovery of Evie's past. Are the Tranquil truly so invisible? Surely, someone would have taken note of a drove of strange, affectless Redcliffe refugees — at least as a creepy curio.

"Are you sure they are leaving?" she asks.

Clemence balances from one foot to the other. "No. In fact, it has occurred to me that I have not noticed Tranquil walk through the gates. One entrance has been blocked by a difficult rift. The other one requires passage on a ferry. I have not become aware of other Tranquil leaving that way." He pauses. "You see, we do not think like those who are not Tranquil. Without a logically superior solution to the current state, there is no sense in altering it."

What in the Void? The analytical part of Margo's mind latches onto the problem with desperate ferocity. It has the merit of distracting her from the absent lichen and what that potentially spells for her. There is no way the damn thing grows this low in the valley — the climate is too warm for it.

"So where could they be?"

"I do not know," Clemence states with admirable indifference.

Margo thanks him again for returning her satchel and walks back to their table. She stops at a short distance, assessing the changed ambiance. With the added crowd, the atmosphere in the tavern warms a little — either because the patrons have reached a critical degree of inebriation, or because the din of conversation allows a degree of privacy. When she looks over at her team's table, she is surprised to see their ranks augmented by several new additions — including the anti-Chantry activist, her taciturn male companion, and an elven woman who looks like a younger and gentler version of Enchanter Minaeve. Margo tries to assess the nature of the collective interaction.

Well. If ever there were three method actors. Bull, in a voice that is either charmingly menacing or menacingly charming, recounts some completely fantastical — and, judging by the occasional shocked gasps and appreciative chuckles, dirty — story. While Margo cannot hear all the details, she surmises that the three principle figurants are a Chantry cleric, a noblewoman, and her chevalier. Dorian is sprawled in his chair, radiating the appearance of bored indulgence. And Solas is smiling his patented cryptic smirk, interjecting some occasional witticisms — which has a devastating effect on the elven redhead, who titters breathlessly and shoots doe-eyed glances at him.

Margo sighs internally. They most certainly do not pay her enough for this. She waits for Bull to finish the story, then covers the distance to the table, slipping into her new mask.

"Hey, boss."

Bull looks up. "Blondie, pull up a seat. We were just waitin' for you."

Margo feels the glances of the newcomers on her, but keeps her attention on Bull.

"Got the room. But Lloyde needs to see the writ of authorization before we can start working." There. The Ben-Hassrath should be able to read between the lines.

Bull gives her an almost imperceptible nod. "Sure thing, doll. We'll do it in a bit. Got a sense of what might go over well with this crowd?"

There is something to the way Bull asks the question that puts Margo on alert. She isn't sure if it's the right move, but it's not like she has many alternative options for reporting back — at least not with their new drinking buddies around. "Well…" she affects a speculative look, "I keep thinking that I wouldn't mind trying my hand at that ballad we heard in Val Chevin."

Something sharp passes in Bull's eye. She also catches a small movement from Solas at the periphery of her vision. Dorian, too, is looking just a tad less indifferent. "Oh, you know the one I'm talking about. Sentimental, but pretty." She turns to the new additions to their group, as if recounting for their benefit. "It's the story about these two sisters, you see. They couldn't be more different — one is beautiful and passionate, the other is rational and plain. One, everyone fights over, the other one is overlooked and forgotten." Since there is no seat available, Margo perches on the edge of the table next to Solas and the redhead. Her hip brushes against his forearm, and he looks up from under the silly hat. Margo notes that his gaze takes a tad longer than usual on its way to meet hers — apparently distracted en route. He doesn't move the forearm, either. Margo clears her throat. If she could kick him under the table, she would — the damn elf is having entirely too much fun with this persona. "Anyway. Their father is a very domineering lord, not letting the sisters have any freedom. So eventually, they run away, start a new life. Except a dashing prince rolls into town, sweeps the pretty sister off her feet, and offers to marry her."

"Maudlin drivel so far," the irascible Chantry denouncer sniffs.

"What happens to the other sister?" That's the elven redhead, and the girl looks like she's hanging on every word. Margo can't help but feel a twinge of gratitude at her question. It saves her from proliferating more bullshit. She turns to the young woman and schools her features into what she hopes is a quizzical expression. "That's the thing. The other sister just… disappears one day. And the tragedy of the ballad is that no one really notices."

There is a pause.

"I may recall the song of which you speak, lethallan." Solas smiles at her, but his eyes under the hat are sharp. "Was it not titled 'Lost Serenity'?After the name of the forgotten sister?"

"That's it!" Margo nods, and shoots Solas a smile — and she doesn't even have to fake it. Clever elf appears to have gotten it.

"Oh, you speak the People's language!" the redhead breathes. "I know very little myself." She looks from Solas to Margo and then back again, her pretty green eyes troubled. "But you are not Dalish. Is the word 'lethallan' not used for kin? Oh! You two must be cousins!"

At this, Dorian is overcome with a truly spectacular coughing fit; Solas colors, his eyes flashing with surprised confusion; and Margo decides that she would be perfectly fine with a rift opening under her feet and swallowing her whole.

"The meaning can be variable, da'len, but you are right to assume that it signifies affinity," Solas finally manages.

Margo is still stuck at "cousins." She catches the Chantry critic's eyes on her, and there is something peculiar to the woman's expression — as if behind the irritable mask lurks the face of another.

Before she can puzzle out what she saw in the woman's features, Margo's attention is drawn by a rapidly approaching rhythmic clanking. Her head pivots in the direction of the noise. The others turn as well, with an assortment of confounded expressions.

The knight from earlier marches towards their table with grim determination, his eyes trained on Margo. She can feel her companions shift positions slightly, as if getting ready for a potential confrontation. She hops down from the table and pivots to face Sir Lancelot the Bizarre.

"I know you," he announces, as he comes to plant himself in front of Margo. Up close, he is not quite as tall as he appears — but he still manages to tower over her. It's distinctly hostile towering. Shit. What did Maile do this time? Please, let it not be that this guy is another notch in her host body's belt. "Where is the demon?"

"You must be mistaking me for someone else," Margo states cautiously. Right. Do not argue with the fellow having a psychotic episode, especially if said fellow is armed, armored, and looks like he is ready to smite some windmills. The French accent does dull the threat factor, at least.

"Hey, hey, hey, let's not get carried away," Bull's voice is a mix of intimidation and cajoling. "You two know each other?"

Lancelot completely ignores Bull — which takes some doing. His hand shoots out with preternatural speed, and, had Margo not stepped out of his way at the last moment, would have closed around her throat. At this point, the table explodes in subtle but rapid reshuffling in response to the threat, but before Margo can further react, there is a muffled pop, like an exhaust boom — or distant thunder — and the aggressively minded Sir Lancelot incomprehensibly loses his balance and clatters to the floor. A few of the other patrons look in their direction, attracted by the commotion. Solas shifts in his chair, and Margo catches a whiff of ozone.

The knight springs back to his feet, but the fall seems to have jolted him out of whatever mental state was causing the hostility. His stance softens, but his gaze returns to Margo, with less anger than confusion.

"I... No. There can be no mistake. Unless..." He stands stock-still, his eyes peering into her like he is trying to drill a hole in her skull and take a peek inside. In the brighter light of the chandelier overhead, Margo suddenly notices details she had overlooked: the way his cheeks are hollowed out, the skin taut over the bones. His eye sockets are tinged with purple, and the whites of his eyes are bloodshot, as if he hasn't slept in days. Margo feels a sudden twinge of sympathy for the armored sod, because he genuinely looks at the end of his rope. "I am Michel de Chevin. And while you claim you do not know me, your likeness has appeared to me before." Margo blinks at this truly mystifying revelation. De Chevin stares at her with wild eyes. "I am on the trail of an ancient demon. And when I find him, I will kill him."

Margo starts. Oh, shit.

"What does Blondie have to do with demons, knight?" Bull's voice sounds a little unsettled.

"Nothing." Solas turns from Bull to Sir Lancelot the Underslept and Murderous. "You have clearly misrecognized my friend, stranger. But would you not join us? Perhaps then you would share your story? We always seek to gather interesting tales to recount in our travels."

The knight looks between Margo and Solas, clearly torn as to what to do.

"Ah… No. Forgive my intrusion. I… You are correct. I must have been confounded." He drifts away slowly, like a sleepwalker. A few paces away he turns, gives Margo one last lingering stare, and then seems to mobilize himself and purposefully walks to the other side of the tavern.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you the impossibility of accurate translation._

 _Next up: More Redcliffe shenanigans._


	39. Chapter 39: Limited Resources

_In which Margo gives out a quest, and the team receives a nocturnal visitor._

* * *

 **Chapter 39: Limited Resources**

The rest of the evening passes uneventfully. Bull spins the occasional story — mostly about war, or women, or both. Margo is silent and distracted, alternating between quiet dread over the loss of the Veil Key lichen, vague foreboding over the fate of the Tranquil, and utter befuddlement over Sir Lancelot the Gawky. Every time Margo's gaze drifts toward the corner of the tavern he occupies, she catches him eyeballing her. As the evening passes, the knight's expression is progressively solidifying into unmistakable hostility.

Her mood is not improved by the fact that mini-Minaeve — whose actual name is Diane, pronounced in the Orlesian manner — is so clearly enamoured with Solas's Robin Hood persona that she is practically falling off her chair in an effort to shorten the distance between them. Solas sticks to cryptically amiable, neither encouraging nor discouraging the flirtation.

Dorian, the bastard, is clearly finding all of this delightfully entertaining, and he keeps shooting Margo covert smirks. Fed up, Margo eventually kicks him under the table.

By the time Bull gives the green light to retire for the night, Margo cannot be out of there fast enough. Not that she has a clear sense of what to do about her sleeping predicament, but she decides that she'll burn that bridge when she comes to it.

As they gather their stuff to relocate upstairs, Diane mobilizes her courage, and, stumbling over her words, asks if Solas would like to "take a walk with her." Margo almost feels a twinge of sympathy for the girl. Useful as Baba's general advice on buses and men might be, it presents one with remarkably few desirable options. The alternative to running is waiting indefinitely at the bus stop — a thankless task if ever there was one. Maybe Diane has the right idea.

Margo doesn't linger to find out the end result of their exchange, slings her backpack over one shoulder, careful not to jostle the vihuela, and proceeds towards the stairs. She catches Solas's rather interrogative gaze on her, but ignores him. If he wants her blessing, he can go take a running jump.

Bull and Dorian are already walking ahead. There's a new kind of familiarity to the way the two carry themselves — the distance between them shorter, their movements unconsciously synchronized. Margo smiles to herself, probably a little sadly — but who's looking? At least someone is on the right course.

Margo's path upstairs puts her on a trajectory that forces her to pass de Chevin's table. Unsurprisingly, he's still planted there, like a nail in a board. As she walks by — studiously ignoring his antagonistic gawking — he catches her wrist. His hand is scalding hot — which makes Margo wonder whether the knight is running a fever. Great. Demented and pestilent.

"Sit, creature," he grinds out. "Let the charades end."

Well, then. Margo tries to disentangle herself, but there is no way to achieve it without making a scene. Bull and Dorian have already disappeared upstairs, and Solas, behind her, is still caught up with Diane. Bastards. Every single bloody one of them.

"Let go, and I'll sit," she tells Lancelot the Grabby with barely contained fury. If they do, in fact, have one Imshael in common, this is the final confirmation that the universe is out to get her. Because of all the people she could foresee sharing her predicament with, it just had to be this psychotic asshat.

"Very well. Please, 'my lady,' do me the honor of sharing my humble table."

Margo doesn't acknowledge the sarcastic tone, yanks her wrist out of his grip, and sits in the opposite chair. She takes a long hard look at the knight in not particularly shining armor. Not all gold that glitters indeed, Baba.

"What do you want with me, Ser Knight?"

He leans in, his features hard. "Do not toy with me, demon. I should have guessed the moment I saw you. You take the girl's face to torture me with what I have done no more."

Oh Void take him, did he somehow come to the conclusion that she is Imshael? And here she thought this night could not possibly get any worse. Margo forces herself to work through the irritation — and fear, because, let's face it, Sir Lancelot the Unreasonable is clearly a loose cannon — and raises her hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"Slow down. First of all, I am no demon. But I have a suspicion I know of which demon you speak."

"Enough!" Sir Asshat smashes his fist against the table. Margo flinches back. She watches the muscles in his jaw move beneath the pale skin, which makes her conclude that he is grinding his teeth. Bad habit, teeth grinding. "Enough games, creature. If you think I shan't run you through in front of witnesses, consider again."

Margo represses the icy creep of fear. She shrugs instead. "You clearly haven't yet, so let's assume you're going to hold off on the murdering, so we might have a chat first. You're looking for Imshael?"

Lancelot the Trigger Happy blanches, his left hand balling into a fist. His right hand travels down, likely to the hilt of some hidden weapon. "You know whom I seek, abomination. You ."

Well, at least the Imshael commonality is confirmed. Margo narrows her eyes at him. "Now, why would you think that I am Imshael? That is what you think, right?"

De Chevin chokes out a bitter laugh. Then, suddenly, he slumps against the back of his chair — like a man who finally found his target, and can take a breath or two before getting to the stabbing and slashing part. "Because," he responds in a strangely congenial tone, "you have tormented my dreams for nearly a year now. Since this is one of the faces you wear — as well you know — who else would you be?"

Oh crap. Margo swallows. It doesn't take any particular brilliance to theorize the parallelism. If this guy is tangled up with Imshael, it is quite possible that not-Solas is to her what not-Maile, or someone who looks like not-Maile, is to Sir Asshat. Oh dear unmerciful universe, please do not let her "lover scorned" hypothesis be true. She doesn't need that particular complication. Fucking Maile.

"Look. I have never seen you before, and I have no idea why Imshael would use my face to terrorize you. But I've had the displeasure of coming across the insufferable bastard, and if it makes you feel better, he does the same to me. What I can tell you is that I am not Imshael, and killing me will put you absolutely no closer to your target." She takes a breath, because all of this is delivered in rapid-fire succession. "Conversely, if you stop for a moment and tell me what happened to you, maybe we can be mutually beneficial."

"More lies," Sir Asshat offers, his feverish gaze fixed on Margo with implacable stubbornness.

Rright. Time to change strategies. "How long since you slept?" she asks.

That seems to throw Sir Lancelot the Ornery for a loop. He frowns. "If you think you can disorient me with your cruelty, creature, you do not know me as well as you think."

"Margo," Margo corrects. "I would really prefer it if you referred to me as 'Margo.' I don't think we are well enough acquainted for you to call me 'creature.'"

That last bit completely flummoxes him, which is precisely what Margo was aiming for. When the knight errant gets off his predetermined cognitive rails, there are flashes of sentience in there.

"That is not your name."

Well, at least he's dropped "creature." There's an improvement.

"Irrelevant for the time being. Let me guess. You don't sleep until you collapse from exhaustion, because every time you do, Imshael shows up and offers you some sort of choice. And no matter what you tell him, you still feel awful when you wake up. Does that sum it up?"

De Chevin's jaw tightens. "Yes. And the only reason you know this…"

"... Is not because I am Imshael, but because he has done the same to me."

Something in the knight's posture shifts. "Why?" he asks at length. The question that follows is barely a croak. "How?"

Margo shakes her head. "Not so fast. We'll trade stories, but first, you need to sleep. You're in no state to actually listen, and I am not telling you anything until you stop threatening to stab me or call me names. Are we clear?"

He looks like he's about to retort with more hostility, but then suddenly the fight goes out of him. De Chevin drops his face into his hands in a gesture so familiar Margo is almost tempted to give his shoulder a reassuring pat. "If I sleep …" He trails off and shakes his head.

"If you don't sleep, you will lose your mind — or what's left of it, anyway — which will not get you any closer to your goal." Margo hesitates. What Sir Lancelot the Dejected really needs is a task. Maybe she can redirect him. "I happen to know a bit of alchemy. And I also happen to be in a similar predicament. There are ways to cut oneself off from the dreams — I just need the right ingredients." She extracts her botany journal from her back-pack, and leafs through to the page where she had sketched the red lichen Amund had shown her — the Veil Lock. "This grows on rocks, usually by the water. I cannot leave my companions — and I'm not going anywhere with you anyway, in case you decide to murder me in some dark alley — but if you find this for me, I could make a remedy that should protect you from the dreaming." Never mind that the climate is likely too hot for either of the lichens.

"There are quicker ways to kill me than with poison you would have me procure for you," he notes dryly.

"I'll take the damn thing with you if you need someone to hold your hand," Margo snaps, utterly done with the entirety of this evening.

He bristles. "I do not need 'handholding,' cre—"

Margo raises a finger. "Ah? What was that?"

"Lady Margo," he grinds out. With the French accent, the emphasis in her name is on the last syllable. Margo almost chuckles. She supposes that Sir Asshat would not be amused by a retelling of Dumas's novel on the eponymous French would-be queen and Catherine de Medici's poison-laced scheming.

"Just Margo is enough," she corrects, then taps the page of her journal. "According to my notes, the lichen is reddish and grows in oblong patches the size of a beer bottle bottom. And it should smell like paint when you rub it between your fingers."

Lancelot the Tentatively Less Bloodthirsty gives Margo a long, dubious look. And then he sighs. "To be honest, you may be too peculiar to be the demon." He cringes a bit at that. "Forgive me. That was ill-mannered of me..."

"Nicest thing you've said all evening."

To give credit where credit is due, the fellow has the decency to look abashed. "My point is simply that if you are not Imshael, then perhaps my luck has finally turned. And if so, then perhaps Andraste put you on my path…"

"All well, lethallan?"

Well, took him long enough. Margo looks up at the elf, who has materialized by their table. She notes that his ears are suspiciously pink. Maybe things with mini-Minaeve didn't go well — or maybe they went too well. Since she's not about to spend intellectual energy scrying by ear color, she turns back to the knight errant, and raises her finger again. "Lichen first. Speculations about divine intervention after."

De Chevin sighs. "Very well. I will strive to locate your… lichen." He shakes his head, as if actually hearing the absurdity of his own words. "Andraste preserve me," he mutters. Then he bows — a little stiffly — and marches off towards Lloyde the Pigeon Stool, presumably to settle his tab.

Solas, with a little nod of acknowledgement, glides towards the stairs. Margo gets up and falls in step next to the elf.

"I must admit I am impressed," he notes pleasantly. "You have maneuvered the erratic knight from threatening to murder you to doing your bidding."

Margo shrugs. "Nothing like appealing to crude self-interest. How much of the conversation did you overhear, exactly?"

Solas's tone is suspiciously casual. "Enough to give me an idea that you and him share a unique predicament. Who were you to Michel de Chevin, I wonder, that Imshael would choose to wear your face in malice?"

Margo is about to point out that she has nothing to do with de Chevin whatsoever, but constantly disavowing Maile's legacy is as naive as it is unproductive. She ought to learn all she can about who the other woman had been — it's that, or being constantly blindsided. "You were eavesdropping?" she asks instead. She isn't sure whether she finds the idea amusing or obnoxious.

"I have good hearing," Solas parries. "And that is not an answer."

She looks at him then. There is something there, lurking behind the amiable mask. "At a guess? Someone he feels guilty about." Margo frowns. What is this line of inquiry of his, exactly? Is he teasing? "What about you, Solas? How has your night been? No evening walk?"

He looks confused, but then understanding dawns. "Ignoring the fact that she is a child, lethallan, I do not seek comfort from such passing encounters. Is your opinion of me so low that you expected me to entertain her offer?"

Margo notices that Solas's ears have gone pink again, and his expression is turning for the stormy. She smiles wryly. "My dear cousin, I find that the fewer expectations I have, the less I am likely to be disappointed."

Solas's eyes widen, but he smothers the reaction quickly, and when he speaks, his tone is academic. "It is a rather poor interpretation of what the term signifies. The correspondences between Elvhen and Common are often tenuous at best." He gives her an inscrutable look. "As to avoiding expectations, it is, undoubtedly, a wise approach."

"What would be a more accurate translation, then?" Maybe she can solve the pet name mystery once and for all.

Solas casts her a sideways glance, then looks straight ahead. He seems to hesitate, frowning at some internal conflict. "Such referents are often variable by context. One meaning is akin to 'kindred spirit,'" he says quietly, his gaze still adrift.

Margo's heart thumps a little painfully. "That's an… interesting turn of phrase, all things considered." Her thoughts stumble upon an utterly absurd conclusion — that he's an outworlder like her, somehow transplanted into an alien body — but she quickly dismisses the ridiculous thought. No. If anyone were ever of this world, it's Solas.

"It is merely a manner of speaking," he continues, his tone mild. "One that originally conveyed affinity beyond the confines of shared appearance or the commonalities of… affiliation. Although I fear the Dalish, in their usage, readily limit it to that."

Margo frowns, puzzled. She's read enough about the Dalish from the Genitivi to understand their predicament. Traditions lost, mode of subsistence transformed to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, preyed on by humans — or displaced towards the less-livable peripheries. It's arguably better than the segregated enclaves that the locals call "alienages" — like the name isn't a dead giveaway for humans' cultural attitudes. Of course, there would be language drift, too. Margo turns the thought over in her head. Something about the whole exchange nags at her. It's not like "authentic" Elvhen would be used anywhere — even if Solas dabbles in linguistics in his spare time, he might know the language from its echoes in the Fade, but that might not be much different from Champollion deciphering the Rosetta stone. An amazing feat, certainly, but hardly grounds to claim fluency.

They make it to the second floor of the tavern. There is another set of stairs at the end of the hallway, which she surmises leads to the attic. Margo shelves the thoughts for later analysis and turns her attention to more immediate problems.

"Solas, wait." He stops, and pivots to face her, his expression curious. "I made a rookie mistake." She inhales. "One of the Tevinters stole my alchemy satchel. It had the lichen I use to control the Dreaming."

"Ah. This is why you sent de Chevin on a gathering expedition." His lips quirk into a small smile. "Clever."

Margo shakes her head. "Not the only reason — I also figured the man needs a task or he will go on a murdering spree. In the meantime, sleep is not in the cards for me just yet."

Solas's gaze finds hers, and lingers. "The alchemical solution is not the only one, as well you know." Something about his tone sounds a whole lot less clinical than the conversation theoretically warrants.

"If you are referring to you sheltering me from the Fade while you forego sleep, then no." She sighs. "I think the Veil Key was meant as… a prosthetic of sorts. To be used until I learn to do what it does by myself. It's my own fault I've grown dependent on it. I will need to learn to go without it anyway — just... not right this minute."

He seems to vacillate for a moment, another internal conflict fought, and decided. "Then let me guide you into the Dreaming when you are ready. I am familiar with plants such as your lichen. And I have seen how you deployed its properties and thus could help you replicate them. What protects you from Imshael is not the lichen itself, but what it enables you to do."

Margo considers this. Objectively, it is a logical proposition. Except that he would have to follow her into what Amund has called her "weaving." Margo tries to parse the complicated emotion. The riverbank, whatever it is, is intimately, inextricably her . Roots of her roots. Whatever essential distillate she has poured into its creation, she isn't sure she is ready to admit another into the space.

"And you would sleep?" she asks cautiously, mostly by way of distraction from the other thoughts.

"Of course." Something about the soft intimacy of that answer sends a shiver down her spine. Margo takes a sudden, shuddering breath. Solas's eyes dart to her lips, and then drift down, before he very visibly forces himself to refocus. Ironically, this is the first time since donning her costume that Margo in fact feels somewhat exposed. She opens her mouth, intent on saying something to break the sudden silence. His eyes return to her lips, and he swallows, the movement seemingly incognizant.

"You are making me feel like a brightly colored fruit," Margo finally manages.

Solas chuckles abruptly, jolted out of his trance. "Forgive me. My mind wandered." The smile he gives her is entirely roguish, the effect exacerbated by the damnable hat. "I will admit that one does become sorely tempted to venture a taste." His tone is light, but his eyes on her are not.

With a herculean effort not to turn into senseless putty, Margo purses her lips. "As long as we're trading niceties, I find your disguise quite fetching too. The feather is to die for." Except that she is fairly certain that the flash of desire in the elf's eyes isn't all on account of her getup. It seems at least equally related to their apparently shared penchant for poorly planned Fade experiments.

Her comment gets her another abrupt chuckle. "Perhaps I should adopt it permanently?"

"And leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake as you wander through Thedas? Have mercy!"

For some reason, Solas's expression turns melancholy. "A rare and precious trait," he sighs. "And one few can afford." He regroups. "Come. Let us rejoin the other two before things get out of hand."

Margo frowns. "What do you mean, exactly?"

What he means becomes abundantly clear when they make their way up the rickety wooden staircase, and stop before the only door at the landing. In the sudden silence, her ears pick up quiet noises, but a suspicious absence of conversation. Oh.

"I do not believe they are too far along," Solas says quietly.

"Wouldn't it be kinder to leave them to it?" Margo responds. She pitches her voice low. If the walls have ears, she might as well make them work for it. "We could… ah… go look for the missing Tranquil? And on that note, thank you for accurately interpreting my story."

Solas's lips quirk into a private little smile. "I quite enjoyed your allegory, despite its gravity." He raises an eyebrow. "As to looking for Tranquil… In the middle of the night? In a town under occupation by enemy forces? With unknown magics eroding the integrity of the Veil?"

"You make it sound very dashing."

"I aimed for ill-considered, but the two are never far apart."

The door flies open, with a somewhat tousled Dorian standing in the frame. There is a very visible flush to his cheeks. Through the opening, Margo notices Bull seated on the bed, mercifully in a state of no greater undress than usual.

"Oh, come in, you two. We can hear you milling about and flirting on the threshold, you know. Might as well resume the process out of earshot of the other residents."

All things being equal, Dorian has a point, so Margo proceeds forward, Solas close on her heels.

Bull, with a completely unperturbed expression, gestures towards the two dormitory-style beds, covered in rudimentary straw pallets. "So. Let's summarise. Solas, report. What did you learn."

Solas sits, then moves over, making room for Margo. She could select the other bed but takes him up on the unspoken invitation instead.

"Alexius has retained some mages and some servants in the keep, but most are in the village. They are forbidden from practicing their magic unless explicitly directed." His face turns grim. "All mages are encouraged to report suspicious actions undertaken by their fellows. And those accused are taken to the castle, not to be seen again within the village."

Bull nods. "Yeah. They're encouraging lateral surveillance. It's a good idea if you don't have the manpower to police vertically. Blondie?"

Margo quickly summarises her conversation with Clemence — this time without the charades — as well as the information about the writ of authorization she has managed to glean from Lloyde. Bull nods at the appropriate moments.

"A censure system, huh? Never works out well in the end, in my experience. The more you forbid something, the more people tend to want it. Strange about the Tranquil, though. We didn't get any intel on them wandering around looking for a place to take them in, and Red never said anything either. Anyway. Not our top priority. Dorian, you sure that the entire contingent of Vints you've seen is new?"

"Yes. Whatever Alexius has been doing in the last month, it would appear that he completely rotated his staff. They are also… not the type of people I would have expected him to draw into his employ." Dorian's usually relaxed posture is substituted with a tense alertness. He takes a seat next to Bull, leans forward, and steeples his fingers in front of his lips, mulling something over. Margo watches as Bull reaches out and lets his massive hand rest on Dorian's shoulder. The Qunari works his thumb into what Margo presumes is a knot in the mage's back. Bull seems distracted as he does it, as if this newfound thing between them is its own, autonomous, barely acknowledged entity. Dorian casts Bull a brief glance, and continues with his musings, simply accepting the touch. "All the new recruits are paid mercenaries of some sort. In Tevinter, each house has its own trained troops — a relationship buttressed by a financial exchange, of course, but there is much more to it than that. One does not outsource one's protection to hired cutthroats."

"So Alexius has either exhausted his goodwill with his habitual defenders or foregone their services in the interest of greater anonymity," Solas concludes.

Bull and Dorian nod at the same time. "Which tells us that, whatever the Vint's up to, he's being hush-hush about it," Bull summarizes.

"Nor do I think the Council of Magisters has thrown its full support behind Alexius's presence here," Dorian adds.

"They're unmarked," Margo interjects, finally capturing the problem that had bothered her since seeing the nondescript soldiers. Bull gives her a curious look. "You know, the soldiers — they're identifiable as troops, but they're not identifiable as someone' s troops. They are well-equipped. But — correct me if I'm wrong — I saw no sigils on the armor, no colors, no military company signs. Nothing that identifies them — either with a nation, or a noble, or an organization. It's like…" Margo waves her hand, trying to capture the thought. "... They're an abstract army."

Bull nods slowly. "That's right. Useful tactic if you want plausible deniability. Or if you really don't want anyone to find out who's footing the bill."

When a knock sounds at the door, Margo starts. She steals a glance at Bull. The Qunari seems entirely unsurprised by their late guest. Dorian gets up to let in their mysterious nocturnal visitor. Once inside, the newcomer throws back his hood, his eyes darting furtively around the room. Margo recognizes the man who accompanied the irascible Chantry-denouncer from earlier.

"I am afraid our accommodations are not much to look at, but please do sit." Dorian gestures towards the free bunk.

The man proceeds to the unoccupied bed and lowers himself on the pallet. Margo guesses he must be in his sixties, with a bony, weather-worn face and dark brown eyes that tilt downward at the corners, giving him a mournful sort of look. He does not strike her as a mage — he is trim, but in a bookish, dusty sort of way. And he looks utterly terrified — so terrified in fact that his teeth chatter visibly. Bull hands him a flask. The newcomer accepts it with trembling hands and takes a long swig, not even flinching at what Margo knows from personal experience is an absurdly strong brew.

"I suppose formal introductions are in order. My name is Brand," he finally says, once the trembling is under control. Brand's speech is cultured, though the Scottish brogue is a little disconcerting. "In a previous life, one of the Ostwick Circle's archivists."

"Brand here is trying to organize the mages who aren't supporting Alexius," Bull explains.

"Organize," their visitor parrots bitterly. "How can ye organize a flock of terrified sheep, all convinced that the slaughterhouse is yon spring pasture, no matter what their eyes tell them?" There is an edge to his voice, equal measures anger and despair. "There's nothing left to organize." He shakes his head.

"You're here, aren't you?" Bull answers calmly. "You wouldn't be taking the risk if you didn't think there was something we could do to help."

Brand sighs. "Dinnae talk to me about risk, young man. At this point, it's just a drowning man grasping at straws — but it's better than doing nothing. Those Red Jenny Friends, or however they call themselves, told me to be on the lookout, said ye'd make contact." He rubs his face with both hands. "I wasn't sure it was ye until the lass's story." He points his chin in Margo's direction. "Risky, it was. Thank Andraste Linnea is a numptie." He shrugs out of his cloak and lays it across his lap. "D'ye like to know how the story ends, lass?"

Margo nods cautiously.

"It ends like this. The betrothed turns out to be far worse than the father — the father, at least, wasn't barmy. And the other sister floats up in the gutter one morning, missing her head."

"Is this a metaphor?" Dorian asks, frowning.

"Wish that it were. If yer organization had shown up a month ago, ye might have tipped the scales for us. But at this stage, it'll be lucky if we can get a few out alive."

"Then let's not waste time." Bull shifts on his bunk, straightening to his full height. "We've got a unit in place — ready to get working. You got some candidates for extraction?"

After a moment of hesitation, Brand fishes out a piece of paper from inside his folded cloak. "Ye met Linnea earlier. She's from Ostwick, like me. Ostwick was calm in comparison to other places, but don't think the Templars didn't take their fun behind closed doors. Still. I would have never thought she'd betray her own brothers and sisters. She has become the magister's eyes and ears among the mages." He unfolds the paper on his knees. "I work as her scribe, so I take a peek at the reports. I warn the folks whose names appear — not that it does much good. She has a system for counting infractions. 'Infractions of speech,' 'infractions of action'... Got a new one recently: 'emotional infraction' — that's when you fail to smile and clap enough at the mention of Tevinter's progressive stance on mages."

"I am surprised that Alexius would demand such… exactitude," Dorian notes.

Brand shakes his head. "I know nothing about that — I've only seen the magister a handful of times meself. But I know Linnea. And I know what happens when someone's name makes it to the list. " He shudders. "I keep waiting for that midnight knock at me own door, you know. I'm sure it's just a matter of time now."

"How can she do this?" The question comes out before Margo has a chance to hold her tongue. But the horror of the middle-of-the-night knock is the ingrained genetic memory of her matriline. Those branches of her kinship tree that extended farther east got pruned by iterations of state repression. When she and Jake were older, Baba told them the stories. The sort that ended with, "And the next morning, all his things were left behind, but Uncle Mihail — well, no one ever saw him again."

Their guest nods at her, as if sensing her comprehension. "At first, I thought it was misplaced vengefulness against her peers. But I think she's gone barmy with petty power. If the Tranquil are any indication."

Bull frowns. "We heard they've been vanishing, with no one noticing."

Their guest shifts uncomfortably. "Ye have to understand how a Tranquil thinks, see — otherwise ye wouldn't think twice about it. I counted many Tranquil among my colleagues — archival work is the sort of thing they excel at. Tranquil don't have much intrinsic motivation. They can decide something based on its objective merits, but not because it's something they want for themselves. Ye have to… give them a little nudge. The magister made vague declaration that they ought to leave, but that's like telling rocks to move. Won't spur them into action."

Margo is about to ask what did, but Solas beats her to it. "And yet, their numbers thin with every passing week? What causes this?"

Brand exhales between his teeth. "Linnea. She's been passing notes to them. It's always just a few at a time. The note tells the tranquil to leave immediately, usually at night. Tells them to go to a specific rendezvous point where their 'resettlement' team will meet them." Brand clasps his hands in his lap. "Tranquil aren't all the same, you know. If ye were to get to know them, ye would see that there are differences. Some might be talented with runes. Others might have a knack for alchemy. Research. Archiving. Astronomy. Each note mentions the specific talent a Tranquil might have and says it's needed in Denerim. Always Denerim. Well, I happen to have a friend in the Denerim refugee assimilation office. After weeks of this, I admit I became suspicious, so I wrote her." Brand shakes his head. "They never got a single Tranquil. Not a one."

"Interesting. But our priority is still the mages," Bull comments.

"And mine. I wouldn't have taken the gamble with ye lot, if I weren't desperate." Brand's eyes dart between the four of them. "Please, understand. Diane is like a daughter to me. I know ye people probably wonder why a human would care, but I practically raised the lass. She was a wee bairn when they brought her to the Circle from my village. Never met her parents, but I knew her grandparents. Good folk. I thought she'd be safe from Linnea. Shows ye how much of an old eejit I was." He turns to Solas, his expression pleading. "Please. I know she took a shine to ye. Help me get her out." He takes a shuddering breath. "Her name is on the latest list."

Margo's eyes quickly dart to the elf. She doesn't envy him the complicated position he has been placed in. Solas's expression remains carefully neutral, except his ears are turning alarmingly pink once again. Margo isn't sure if this is embarrassment or anger.

"If only there were a cure for mindless fanaticism," Dorian remarks acerbically. "Who else is on your overzealous colleague's list of 'infractors'?"

As it turns out, there are two more potential targets: a male elven mage by the name of Lysas, and another human mage named Talwyn.

From there, Bull and Brand settle into discussing the logistics of extraction — the possibility of getting the mages out by ferry, the practicalities of transfer and protection, and the prospects of setting up long-term support. Margo suggests they add Clemence to the roster of endangered locals, but the Qunari shoots the proposal down even before she has a chance to fully present it. "Limited resources, Blondie. Gotta prioritize. If we can manage another run, I'll consider it." She glances at Dorian and then Solas for support but is met with quietly apologetic looks. Both seem to agree with Bull.

Of course they do. In different circumstances, with enough argumentation, she might convince them. But there is no time — or opportunity. As it stands, both are, first and foremost, mages — and no one likes unpleasant reminders. Margo tries not to seethe about it and fails.

And, of course, it turns out they're on an incredibly short timetable — Linnea's report is slated to go to Redcliffe castle the next evening.

"Ye'll have to create a distraction," Brand pleads. "Something to draw enough attention to ye to let me get the others past the gates. As long as not all eyes are on me, I'll sneak them out. If yer people can protect them from there..."

Bull nods solemnly. "They'll be in good hands."

Before Brand leaves, he extracts a rolled up scroll from his cloak. "Thought ye'd find this useful," he says, handing the vellum to Bull. "It's a fake, but a good one. I drew it up before coming up here — let the ink set for the night. It should pass Lloyde's scrutiny."

Margo doesn't need to see the scroll to know what it is. Bull passes it to Dorian. "Wanna forge a signature?"

Dorian squints at the vellum and nods. "That, I can certainly do."

Once the door closes behind their guest, Bull turns to Margo.

"All right, Blondie. How are you on politically offensive songs?"

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the joys of lateral surveillance._

 _Next up: Some unforeseen alchemical effects and unpleasant confined spaces._

 ** _Note to readers:_** _So, t_ _he upcoming chapters of the Redcliffe arc have an unfortunate tendency to end in cliffhangers. I will do my best to post on a tight schedule so that those of you who don't like that sort of thing don't have to wait for too long for the resolution. I'll try to keep to a chapter/day schedule until the Redcliffe arc resolves itself, and then I'll go back to something closer to 1/week._


	40. Chapter 40: Treacherous Terrain

_In which Margo makes a dubious decision, and ends up in a dark place._

* * *

They go over the practicalities, and the rest of the crew settles into beds soon enough, but Margo cannot bring herself to consider sleep. She procrastinates. Once the lights are out, she opens the hatch and climbs to the roof. Between the prospect of Imshael's visitation and the necessity to play political bait the next day, she doesn't quite know what to do with herself.

She is simultaneously too tense and too emotionally exhausted to linger on the conundrum of Diane's crush on Solas — which, provided all goes well, will only be reinforced by the whole savior dynamic. She kicks the thought vigorously under the long-suffering rug, and she pictures herself stomping on it for good measure. There. All packed. There is enough on her plate without misplaced jealousy. It's not like she has any claims on the elf anyway.

Still. For a few minutes she somehow expects Solas to join her, but he does not — either taking her excuse about needing fresh air at face value, or, because, as she is beginning to suspect, the Fade is as essential to him as air and water.

The hatch leads to a slanted, shingled roof, and Margo sits cross-legged, back propped against the warm bricks of a chimney. From her perch she can see the entirety of Redcliffe — the ghostly outlines of houses, the orange glow of the occasional lit window, and the dark, looming shadow of the keep in the distance. All of it beneath the glow of alien stars. A soft breeze worries her hair, bringing the smell of the lake, interlacing with the scents of woodsmoke, fir resin, and manure.

She considers what is ahead of her. Bull's plan is, as usual, simple. In the early evening, when the crowds begin to gather, they will present the writ to Lloyde. And then it's up to Margo to walk a political tightrope: piss off the Vints enough to draw them in, but not enough to get herself arrested or kicked out immediately. "Make it ambiguous," Bull cautioned. "We need to draw attention, not get ourselves kicked out." If a confrontation happens, Dorian will step in, and they all rebrand themselves as his retinue. But Bull is hoping it won't get to that and that they will get away with a stern talking-to from Lloyde. Meanwhile, all the action should make Brand and the escapees the least of anyone's trouble.

To say she has a bad feeling about it all would be the understatement of the era.

Margo's attention is drawn to the sound of a rhythmic clatter — one that is somehow familiar. She peers into the semi-darkness. By the glow of the giant moon, the lone figure stands out in sharp relief against the whitish gray of the cobblestones.

Apparently, Sir Asshat is on his way back. He comes to a halt some fifteen feet away from the entrance to the tavern below and looks up.

"Who is up there?" he calls out, his voice rough. "Show yourself."

Margo hesitates. Oh well. No point playing possum. "How goes your quest for the lichen, Ser Knight?" she asks. Hopefully he isn't carrying a ranged weapon. If ever there were an opportunity to get away with a quiet murder...

"Ah." De Chevin's tone is cool. "Is crouching in the shadows like a corrupted spider an intentional strategy? This town is full of twitchy characters. One might not think twice before sending an arrow into the dark."

Margo gets lower to the shingles, just in case. "You say the nicest things," she retorts, matching his tone.

If throat clearing could sound annoyed, what follows from below would certainly qualify as an example of it. "I found your lichen. At least judging by the stench. Would you care to come down and confirm that this vile thing is what you sent me for?"

"So you could stab me in the throat and be done with it?" Margo chortles. "Not a chance. How about I meet you in the tavern?"

"The door is bolted."

"Fortunately, I presume I can open it from the inside, no?"

The figure hesitates for a second. "Very well. I will wait."

It takes her a few minutes to sneak back into the room, make her way to the door through the snoring darkness, and descend the three flights of stairs. The bottom floor is mercifully deserted. For a brief second, Margo considers what this means. There will be no one to call for help in the case that Sir Asshat is back to his bloodthirsty ways. Then again, Margo puts her chances of surviving the next day to a multiple of zero, so at least this way she'll die without the additional embarrassment of having to sing.

Sir Lancelot the Forager is correct. The door is indeed barred by a plank. Margo lifts it off its brackets quietly. De Chevin proceeds inside with a curt nod in her direction. She notes that his boots make squishy sounds as he advances. There is a distinct algae smell to him.

The knight selects a seat at a nearby table and lowers himself into it with visible exhaustion. Margo frowns. Maybe the lichen put up a fight?

"Here," he says, unwrapping a handkerchief that once upon a time might have been white. Margo looks. At its center are multiple fragments of a red lichen. It smells like turpentine.

"That's the one," she says cheerily. "You only found the single specimen?"

Sir Asshat fixes her with an irritated glare. He looks like he might have more developed opinions on the subject of the lichen's uniqueness, but he limits himself to a laconic yes. He points to the other chair, and Margo proceeds to sit. She supposes it's the least she can do. He did somehow procure the correct lichen, after all.

"Now, I would like some answers," he states. "How have you survived?"

Margo shrugs. "Since I'm not sure which incident of me almost dying you are referring to, I will tell you about the most recent one. About a month ago, I had a close brush with death. The experience altered my memory. I have recovered some of it since, but only tiny fragments. I remember very little of my past, and entire stretches are blank."

The lie comes easily.

Sir Asshat blinks slowly, but the original expression of shock is quickly replaced with one of undiluted suspicion. "A convenient turn of events," he comments.

"Not especially."

"And as a result of this memory loss, you have joined a troop of wandering troubadours?"

Margo considers what the most expedient strategy for dealing with Sir Lancelot the Suspicious might be. On the one hand, he is perhaps one of the only people she has met that might shed some light on Maile's past. Not to mention that, as far as Imshael is concerned, they are de facto in the same camp. It would behoove her to make an ally of him. On the other hand, something about the fellow just rubs Margo the wrong way. Still. Being infantile about it just because Sir Asshat irritates her on principle doesn't get her particularly far.

"It's not a bad life," she evades.

De Chevin chuckles dryly. "Forgive me if I fail to be convinced."

"By which part? That I almost died? Or that I lost my memories? Or that being a minstrel is a decent living?"

"Frankly, any of these. But your claims to amnesia are especially dubious. In particular as a result of yet another near death." His expression is grim. For a moment, the knight looks like he is about to add something else. Then the impulse passes, and he clams up again.

Screw it. Margo stands, and, to the utter stupefaction of Sir Lancelot the Unsuspecting, lifts the hem of her shirt to reveal her abdominal scar. "Does this look life-threatening enough to you?"

De Chevin turns an alarming shade of red and quickly averts his gaze. "I… Ahm. You didn't…" He clears his throat. "Yes. That sort of wound is hardly survivable."

Margo lets go of the hem and sits back, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. Will this day never end? "And from the scar you should be able to tell that it is relatively recent. In this instance, I survived because there was a very skilled healer nearby."

The knight gives her a cautious look. At length, apparently assured that no other items of clothing are intending to rearrange themselves to great rhetorical effect, de Chevin ventures a comment. "It does not explain Imshael."

There, at least, Margo needs not lie. "It started with a draught. An alchemy test. Called Imshael's Bargain."

De Chevin has the decency to look outraged. "Someone would make you drink such a thing on purpose? "

"Yes," she says simply.

He mulls this over quietly. The pause gives Margo time to decide on the next steps of her strategy. Whatever else this guy is, he is clearly a man of action. Which is to say, someone whose excess purposefulness should be channelled towards peaceful ends.

"I would know more of your encounters with the demon," he finally says, and his voice has lost some of its defensive edge.

"And I yours," Margo answers, matching his milder tone. "But not tonight. As I said, I am not sharing stories until you sleep."

De Chevin looks like he is about to protest, and then his eyes fall on the lichen. His gaze morphs from appalled to horrified.

"You aren't suggesting…"

Before he can finish, Margo tears off a small piece of the reddish stuff, pops it into her mouth, and swallows. The taste is beyond vile. It's like ingesting turpentine laced with vomit. She gags, blinking tears out of her eyes. "Oh, fuck me," she croaks.

De Chevin makes a choked noise at the profanity, and takes a turn for the crimson. Great. A prude.

"Do you at least believe me now that I am not trying to poison you?" Margo finally manages to ask around the gagging reflex.

"Not at all," he says.

If she thought that screaming at him would help, she would. "Do you think I'm eating this for my own amusement? The only reason I am putting up with it is that it's preferable to Imshael."

That, somehow, seems to get through. De Chevin considers the lichen with queasy horror.

"How do I know you haven't taken an antidote before?"

Margo shrugs through a painful stomach cramp. "You don't. In fact, I don't know that this won't kill me. But I'm willing to take the risk. And if that doesn't tell you how I feel about Imshael, I don't know what will." She forces herself to breathe slowly. At length, the pain subsides. "I'm also not forcing you to take it. You can make up your own mind."

He glares at her. "Oh, I have a choice, do I?" De Chevin barks a laugh, the sound brittle.

"Yes."

"Why should I trust you?"

Whatever else he is, the knight is not the crafty type. Margo can read his intent clearly enough — and the scales are not tipping in her favor. She is going to have to do better than this if she wants Sir Lancelot the Unwilling to do what she needs him to do.

"Fine," Margo says. She forces herself to meet his gaze, and hold it. "You are right. I have an ulterior motive."

Lancelot the Vindicated looks momentarily triumphant. His sword hand travels, once again, to his side.

Margo leans in, pitching her voice to a quick whisper. "My colleagues and I are trying to rescue several mages from Redcliffe whose fate is probably going to be worse than death if we don't." She winces internally at the cliche, but banks on the idea that bombastic utterances should work well on knights errant the multiverse over. "And I'm hoping you and I might help each other."

De Chevin's expression takes a turn for the incredulous. "And who, exactly, are you and your colleagues?"

Margo shakes her head. Her stomach cramps again. She forces to keep her expression to neutral, lest he misinterpret it as another lie. "I can't tell you that. Listen. Things… are probably going to get unpleasant here tomorrow. I'd recommend getting out before that happens. But I need you to do me a favor."

"Would you have me collect another poisonous plant for the road?"

Well, at least he's finding his sense of humor. Small favors and all that. "No. I need you to escort someone out of here and to safety. You shouldn't have too much trouble with it, I don't think."

De Chevin frowns. "Whom?"

"Clemence. The Tranquil from the tavern."

"Why the Tranquil? I thought your concern was with mages."

"My team's priority is the mages. But the Tranquil are in just as great a danger. Except no one will lift a finger to help them, because… you know. Tranquil."

Margo grits her teeth against the next cramp. Her mind races. The fucking lichen is toxic, no doubt about it. Amund never mentioned the dosage. She should have taken less. Or perhaps it needed to be treated first — likely boiled in milk. Like aconite. Other plants too. Her mind is too focused on anticipating the next wave of searing pain to remember which.

"You are unwell," de Chevin notes, his expression suddenly alarmed.

An observant knight. What's not to like? "Yes. If you take the lichen, boil it in milk first. Or soak. But better boil." She sways, and grabs the table for stability. "Takes care of toxin, keeps effects." The words come out slurred.

"You need a healer!"

The cramp passes slowly. Margo's eyes refocus. "Clemence. Please. Get him out."

"I… Where?"

The next cramp tears through her and doubles her over. Cold sweat drips down, stinging her eyes. The tips of her fingers go numb. That's it, then. In a brief moment of clarity, Margo almost laughs. A stupid way to go, but one dies as one lived. At least, no singing.

"Haven," she manages. After that, the world fractures into nothing but pain — and then, mercifully, darkness.

* * *

Margo wakes up in something that she initially identifies as a coffin. There are rough wooden planks under her back. It's quiet, dark, and smells of mops. Her mind is sluggish and fuzzy, but it still stumbles over the juxtaposition: was she buried with a mop? There are certainly traditions on Earth where burial sites would contain something pertinent to the deceased — anywhere from tools of their trade, to coins to pay the ferryman, to, say, a couple of slaves and a wife.

But why a mop?

Margo tries to open her eyes, then immediately squeezes them shut — it feels like someone is trying to drive needles into her brain. When the pain passes, she cautiously opens one eye, then the other, and turns her head. A greenish orb floats about three feet off the ground. It illuminates some mops, a broom or two, an assortment of buckets, and Solas.

"Sleep well?" he asks calmly. Margo blinks, trying to focus on his face in the ghostly glow. The elf's expression is collected, but his eyes are pinched at the corners in a way that makes her conclude that the he is absolutely, utterly livid.

She gathers her strength, and forces herself to tilt into a sitting position. On a scale from one to ten, where one is waking up refreshed after a long restful sleep, and ten is the absolute worst hangover in the history of humans' experiments with ethanol, she decides she's at about a seven. She props her back against the wall and almost jumps out of her skin when a mop clatters to the floor. In the wake of its fall, the silence is deafening.

"So," Margo ventures, then winces. Her throat feels raw. "I see we are continuing the fine tradition of you putting me back together." She tries to smile.

"You are amused?" Solas asks, the polite veneer barely veiling the anger beneath. "If I had not decided to follow you downstairs, I would have likely been too late."

Margo sighs. There will be no skirting the confrontation on that one. And she supposes the elf has a point. "I miscalculated with the lichen," she admits. "But it was that or have de Chevin act on his suspicion that I am Imshael."

Solas, seated against the opposite wall, shifts to a cross-legged position and leans forward. His hands are clasped in his lap in what looks like a death-grip. He peers at her. His eyes in the greenish glow are the color of storm clouds.

"Let us, for the moment, disregard the fact that you chose to meet someone destabilized by lack of sleep who believed you to be his enemy, in the dead of night and with no witnesses to stay his hand. Tell me, was poisoning yourself truly preferable to allowing me to assist you?"

Oh. So that's what it's about. Margo frowns. "Hold on. Since you were creeping around and eavesdropping, you are now in the unique position to let me know what happened after I lost consciousness. Why are we in a broom closet?"

Solas throws his hands up in frustration. "Because I thought you would not wish to explain to the Iron Bull why you chose to ingest a toxin in avoidance of sleep. I doubt that talk of ancient demons haunting you would earn his goodwill. Since any lie I could have woven would only have complicated the situation, and I needed a place to heal you..." He gestures with his hand. Voila. Mops.

Margo nods cautiously. "Thank you for that." They sit in tense silence for a few moments. "For the record, I did not take the lichen because I thought it was a better alternative to your help."

Solas's expression grows flinty. "Did you not? Before you knew of its effects, you did it readily enough." He glares like he is willing her to challenge his explanation. And, if Margo is absolutely honest with herself, the elf is not entirely wrong. Whatever he sees in her expression, his eyes widen, something precariously close to shock passing over his features. Then his face shutters, and he averts his gaze.

Shit. Sugarcoating this will either lead to a lie — and Solas will certainly recognize it as such — or to a species of "it's not you, it's me," which is arguably even worse. Margo breaths out. Fine. No sugarcoating then. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Solas, bear with me for a moment."

He turns back to face her, and Margo freezes. The pleasantly polite mask is back. Ah. Well, if there is nothing to lose at this point, then the least she can do is be honest. "You're right," she says, forcing herself to hold his gaze. "I feel ambivalent about your help, but not for the reasons you might think."

"And what reasons would you impute to me?"

"I don't impute anything. I can only explain to you the source of my ambivalence as I experience it."

"There is no need," he says stiffly, and turns away again.

"Actually, there is a need, and I should have done it sooner." Margo forces herself to step back from the maelstrom of emotions — because they're creeping into her voice and making it tremble. How can anyone think analytically through this shitshow? "There is a huge structural imbalance between us, by virtue of our respective natures."

Solas turns back to her slowly, his expression still as a statue's. Whatever he was expecting her to say, this was not quite it.

Well, she's gotten this far, no point in turning tail now. "I am at an enormous disadvantage. Because let's face it, I know very little about you, beyond the mask you craft — yes, even with me." He looks like he's about to protest, but Margo shakes her head. "Please, let me finish. We all wear masks. I lay no claims to what's beneath yours. Over time, I may come to know what that is, or I may not. But that's not the point. The point is that I know very little about me . Not who my body was, not what strange synergistic effects arise from my dislocation into it, not what it means that I am able to access the Fade the way I do." She takes a breath. "And as I discover it, the process takes something of the old me and reshapes it."

The silence in the broom closet is so thick she can hear the mice scurrying in the walls. She forces herself to meet Solas's stare — and consciously stops herself from trying to interpret his expression. "You are an expert on the Dreaming, but more than that, I think you truly love the Fade. It is a source of delight and curiosity and solace — no pun intended. And I get that. I certainly can understand intellectual curiosity. But in this case, insofar as my fumbling around in the Fade is just an object of conceptual interest for you, please realize it also happens to be a very intimate part of my… becoming whatever it is that I'm becoming. And I'm not saying that, were our roles reversed, I might not feel the same about wanting to unravel the puzzle — I probably would — but..." She trails off.

Solas is still staring at her, his face unreadable. For a brief moment in the eerie glow, his eyes look bottomless. "You think I offer aid because of idle curiosity?"

"Not idle. But still one of the sources behind the motivation. " Margo shuts her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. They do not share the idioms that would allow her to articulate this more precisely, but there is no going back now. Might as well get the rest of it out on the proverbial table. "The nature of the Dreaming, as I understand it, is such that you helping me means that you come to see me… ah... under magnification, if that word makes sense to you. Very close-up. But that gaze is necessarily one-sided."

Margo looks at the elf again. The longer the seconds stretch, the harder it becomes to break eye contact. She briefly considers the predicament of the rabbit caught in the glare of headlights.

Solas exhales sharply. "And you believe that I would not respect your wish should you choose to keep the curtain drawn? That I would exploit this imbalance and…" he breaks off. She sees his throat work around the ending of the utterance. "Force myself into your mind? " he finishes. There is a brittle edge to his question. That was not her meaning, but the elf has certainly identified the worst-case scenario extrapolation of the power disbalance. Margo watches him, trying to puzzle out what experiences might lurk behind his shocked anger. For a second, he seems much older than he looks. No, not older. Ancient. Or, rather, outside of time entirely. Margo tries to shake away the illusion.

"In this case, intention doesn't matter. It is the structure of the encounter." What she really wants to say is that a culture in a petri dish can't exactly stare back. She shudders. Now there's a horrifying image. Instead, Margo keeps to the abstract explanation. "You cannot will away the power differential — it is built-in. Intellectually, I know that it would be both stupid and wasteful not to seek your help with understanding the Fade — I remember Dorian's comment about how rare somniari are. But it places us in an awkward relationship — at best, as mentor and student, and at worst, as researcher and experimental animal." Margo sighs, and looks down at her hands. "That's why I am ambivalent. The alchemy allows me to even out the playing field a little. I still can't meet you as an equal, but it changes the dynamic enough to make it palatable for me."

Solas looks like he is about to say something in response, but he presses his lips into a tight line instead. Margo sighs. Oh well. Why stop now? She looks the elf square in the eyes. "And in case you're racking your brain as to why I would wish to even things out with you, it is because the alternative is…" She fishes for an analogy. "It makes for barren soil. Nothing will grow on it. Nothing healthy, anyway, not in the long run."

Solas mouths a soft "oh," the sound barely audible. The glowing orb sputters and momentarily blinks out of existence, but then stabilizes again. For a brief second he looks absurdly young, but the illusion is likely a trick of the light. And then his expression turns wistful, with the echoes of some timeless, irresolvable heartbreak.

"There is no solving this conundrum for us then," he says quietly. "Perhaps it is as well. If you allow me to pursue your metaphor, even if we had the time to alter the terrain, I fear the broader landscape we inhabit will never be hospitable for the sort of thing you seek to cultivate."

Margo crosses her arms over her chest, at this point in mild exasperation. It would seem that the elf's bad habit of finding the nearest fatalistic sinkhole to leap into is solidly entrenched. "Do not confuse barren soil with inhospitable landscape. All sorts of things thrive in inhospitable landscapes." At Solas's unconvinced expression, Margo chuckles. "Say, lichen."

The analogy has the merit of propelling him out of his morose brooding, and straight into aggrieved incredulity. "Do you suggest that this," he gestures between them, "is akin to a lichen? At best unpalatable, and at worst toxic?"

Margo chuckles. "Depends on your approach. Alternatively, lichen are also resilient and potent, with a range of intriguing, albeit sometimes unexpected properties. Not to mention that they are, in fact, composite organisms — different beings symbiotically tangled up with one another into a single whole."

A flash of wry amusement — and, for the briefest of instants, something that bears a suspicious resemblance to hopefulness. "An interesting perspective," Solas comments finally. His lips quirk. "'Composite organisms.' Hmm. You will have to tell me more of this when we have the opportunity." She's not sure whether this is pure scientific curiosity or double entendre. Or, likely, both.

She gets to her feet slowly. The elf follows her up from his seated position, and suddenly, with both of them upright, the space feels impossibly narrow. Why is it that all of their complicated conversations happen in awful, uncomfortable places? Undead-infested bogs, mop-infested closets...

He makes no move to leave. "It is early still — the others are most probably asleep..." There is something almost tentative to his voice. "And on the subject of unpredictable effects, your body still requires healing for the residual toxicity."

Margo nods in acquiescence. "Could I request a cleaning spell as well? In the interest of minimizing potential questions about… undesirable topics?"

"Of course." Solas brings his hands up and lets his palms rest on her bare shoulders. The scent of ozone intensifies, and the magic ripples across her skin in two rapid waves. Of all the spells she's seen him cast, Margo decides that the built-in dry cleaning is her favorite.

Solas retains a small frown as he examines her.

"What is it?" Margo asks suspiciously.

"If I may?" Solas asks, and before she can figure out what he is intending to do, he begins to unbraid her hair. Considering the previous evening, Margo supposes she's sporting the Medusa look. Not exactly appropriate for a minstrel, unless turning the audience into stone is part of the act.

His fingers are quick, but gentle, and Margo finds her focus drift a little at the quiet intimacy of his touch.

"I fear I have no hidden talents for any intricate arrangement beyond a simple plait," Solas muses, as he considers what to do with the unmanageable mane of blond strands.

Margo cocks an eyebrow, reluctant to move too much lest his thumbs stop rubbing little circles around her temples. "And failing to achieve advanced mastery, you decided to give up entirely and shave your head."

That gets her a surprised little laugh. "One does strive to avoid mediocrity."

Margo looks up. "We're in a broom closet. No one will ever know. Go ahead. Try a plait."

Another chuckle. After a small hesitation, Solas leans in, gathers her hair over one shoulder, and sets his fingers to the task of braiding. His brows are drawn in a frown, but Margo watches his lips quirk with barely suppressed amusement. The sight proves distracting, and Margo searches for something safer to look at. All she comes up with are more mops. At length, she hands Solas a spare piece of leather cord from her pocket, and he secures the end of the plait. He gives the overall result a critical once-over.

He doesn't look convinced. "Does it not win your approbation?"

"It does," Solas shrugs, and tucks a loose strand behind her ear. Then he pauses, as if considering some complex existential problem. "I fear I find myself more partial to the tousled mess. It invites one to speculate what other circumstances might achieve a similar effect," he comments casually.

Margo's mind, ever eager to generate conceptual models, conjures a broad variety of possibilities. For some reason, not a single one involves anything reasonable: like, say, fighting demons. She shakes her head. "Do you ever run out?"

"Do I ever... ?"

"The flirts. I'm just curious. Do you ever find yourself reaching for one and coming up empty-handed? 'Oh no, used them all up again, must resupply' — that sort of thing?"

Solas smothers a cheeky smirk. "It has not happened yet. Would you prefer I were more sparing?"

Bastard. "This broom closet is entirely too small for you, me, and your ego. Shall we go pilfer breakfast from the kitchen?"

Solas hesitates. He takes a small step forward, his face suddenly very close to hers. Margo's lips part involuntarily. The impulse to bridge the distance and kiss him is maddening. His hand comes up to smooth another loose strand away from her face. He leans in then, but changes the trajectory at the last moment, and plants a soft kiss on her cheek, just a fraction of an inch away from the corner of her lips. For a second Solas looks torn, and a little lost — and the expression, contrasted with the habitual neutral, pleasant mask, or the occasional flashes of cheekiness is heartrendingly sweet. And then something shifts, and his gaze turns purposeful.

"There may be more than one way to even the terrain, fenor," he says quietly. And with that, he holds the door for them to exit.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by a lot of coffee, and my pounding at the keyboard._

 _Next up: Margo sings some songs, and the team meets Alexius._


	41. Chapter 41: Masters of War

_In which Margo repurposes some lyrics, and the team gets an invitation they cannot refuse._

* * *

They find the kitchen already staffed, and the cook — a busy, slightly brusque elf, who would be matronly if she weren't so rail-thin — orders them to sit and equips them with bread, cheese, apples, and a pot of tea that Solas eyes with almost as much loathing as de Chevin the night before reserved for the lichen.

"You're the minstrels, then?" the redhead, who introduces herself as Elandra, shoots over her shoulder. At the sound of the name, Margo stills, the sudden recognition a painful jolt. The mother of Jan's child was an Elandra, who also was an elven redhead. Margo hopes the Inquisition fulfilled the soldier's last request — she passed it on to Cassandra when they cremated the victims of the Avvar debacle.

"We are," Solas confirms, taking a tentative peek into the teapot. He makes a face.

The cook offers a sympathetic head bob. "Bitter, ain't it? Never liked the stuff myself either. Can get you sweet water if you'd rather."

After setting a mug of steaming, heavily honeyed liquid that also smells very faintly of lemongrass in front of her guest, Elandra goes off to busy herself with the day's cooking prep. A child of about seven burst into the kitchen from behind a side door, carrying a crate of vegetables almost as big as her. Margo finds herself staring in uneasy puzzlement. The kid has her mother's red hair and bright blue eyes, their color and shape an exact replica of Jan's. But she also looks completely human. Margo wonders how heredity works in case of mixed-race offspring. Are elven phenotypical traits recessive? But recessiveness would imply that elves carry enough human genetic material for the children to present as human. If DNA is indeed how heredity is coded in this universe. She mulls this over. Her embodied experience as Maile gives little evidence for assuming that there aren't, in fact, radical biochemical difference for how life operates in this world. Isomorphism, after all, doesn't mean sameness. Based on how quickly phytochemical compounds are processed metabolically, there are definite divergences.

The fact of the matter is, however the heredity lottery plays out, the girl is clearly Jan's daughter. And there are no comforting words Margo could offer, nothing that wouldn't just awaken old aches.

A clatter from the other part of the kitchen jolts her out of her thoughts, and Margo quickly refocuses her gaze. She notices that Solas is watching her with a pensive look. Once caught, he quickly tweaks his expression towards the amiably neutral end of the spectrum.

"Do you wish to know what occurred with your errant knight after you lost consciousness?" he asks quietly between sips of his drink. His tone is a little too even. Margo quirks an eyebrow at the use of the possessive — and his ironic inversion of the correct expression.

"Not my knight, but yes. Fill me in."

"He did attempt to help you. It was lucky I intercepted him before he roused the entire inn. More relevantly for your purposes, he has somehow decided he is honor bound to do your bidding." Solas looks at her with an unreadable expression. "You put yourself at risk to save a single Tranquil. You also sent de Chevin into the Inquisition's path. I suspect he will join readily enough, should the offer be made."

Margo frowns. Either Solas had a detailed conversation with Ser Asshat after she passed out, which is doubtful, or he overheard the end of the original exchange. Which begs the question of how long had he been sneaking about, and to what purpose. Whatever it is, he is clearly not trying to hide the fact. "Regarding Clemence — that's the Tranquil's name — I saw no one else volunteer," she shrugs.

Solas's expression turns speculative. "That is not quite an answer."

Margo frowns. What the hell is he fishing for? "I could tell you that I did it because it was the 'right thing' to do, but claiming that sort of moral absolute seems silly — I've no idea if it was the right thing to do. Clemence might have been safer here, for all I know."

The elf nods thoughtfully. "Then why, lethallan?"

Margo shrugs. "Clemence tried to be kind, even though he got no personal emotional benefit from it." She pauses, mulling over the other thoughts. "His way of being in the world is unusual, but that doesn't mean we should simply abandon him. Especially since we do know something strange is happening to the Tranquil."

Solas observes her with a contemplative expression but doesn't get a chance to respond.

"Aha, so this is where you are hiding!"

Margo turns her head in the direction of the voice. Dorian, dressed in his more habitual clothes, looms in the door frame. "Is there more tea to be had?" He joins them at the table.

"Have the two of you slept at all?" he asks, with a quirk of an eyebrow.

"Of course." Solas takes another sip of his drink, and reaches for an apple. "Have you?"

Dorian narrows his eyes at him. "Naturally."

While the two mages are occupied with attempting to out-smirk each other from underneath their studiously neutral masks, Margo appropriates the last slice of cheese.

* * *

They spend most of the day at the tavern. Bull reiterates his orders, which can be boiled down to "create and sustain a distraction," but he leaves the specifics to Margo and gives her leave to prepare. She picks a quiet table in the corner of the room away from prying eyes and extracts the Genitivi volume from her bag, along with her journal. There is no time or opportunity to learn new songs. What she can do is adapt her preexisting repertoire. It's not that different from alchemical work, in the end. Both are a matter of making expedient substitutions while keeping faithful to the principle of the original formula.

Using Dorian's quill and ink to write is laborious, messy work, but after some time, Margo gets the hang of it, and she begins to reshape the familiar lyrics, occasionally leafing through the book to extract events, place names, and historical figures. She counts off the rhythm in her head to see if the new stanzas imitate the original pattern closely enough. She has the chops to change the words — but most certainly not the melody. At one point, Dorian offers his help, but she declines with a smile. Bull and Solas, at another table, appear to be absorbed in a quiet conversation with an unfamiliar mage.

As the sun creeps towards the horizon, its slanted glow painting Margo's table in stripes of gold through the rough privacy slats on the window, the tavern begins to fill up. Neither de Chevin nor Clemence make an appearance. Diane and Brand are also in absentia. Eventually, Bull motions her over to the their table. Margo blows on the ink to set it, gathers her things, and rejoins her companions.

The Qunari passes her his flask. "You ready, Blondie? I'm thinking a few more minutes, and we'll start." Margo nods, but declines the drink. He offers it to Solas — with the edge of a challenge — but the elf declines as well, as does Dorian. Bull shrugs and takes a swig himself. "We're gonna put on a show, but we need to transition roles. Blondie, same course of action for you. I need you to grab their attention, and ruffle some feathers, but make it vague enough that we have plausible deniability. Solas, you're on gathering coin — and checking out the reactions up close. If anyone looks like they're going to draw a knife or throw shit, give me a heads-up, or intercept quietly. Dorian — sit back and look bored. If Alexius or any of his friends show up, you're on bullshit duty. Everyone clear?" They all nod.

* * *

It starts well enough. Margo carries the writ over to Lloyde, who peers at it with a one-eyed squint that really calls for a monocle, then nods and returns the vellum. "Still no whistling, lass. House rules." From there, it's a matter of drawing the crowd's attention. It's not like Margo has any fear of public speaking — her previous career hammered it out of her effectively enough. She bullshits her way through introducing herself through an exceedingly vague royal "we." She thanks the inhabitants of Redcliffe for their hospitality, shooting a smile at Elandra the cook, who is standing by the kitchen doors and wiping her hands on her apron. Then Margo picks a table to sit on, her back to giant barrels of ale. She props her foot on a chair, the viheula in her arms. The pose is as much a performance of slightly saucy casualness as it is strategic. It allows her to set her journal next to her, in case she needs to peek at her rewritten lyrics, or at the chords — and it means she doesn't have anyone at her back. Heads turn in Margo's direction, but most of the expressions are quite dubious.

The tavern door opens to admit a group of newcomers. Every single one of them seems to be a Vint. They look... unpleasant. Dangerous, and a little slimy, like one's stereotypical idea of a disreputable cutthroat — only with better teeth. Margo watches them settle at a large table in the center of the room. They get the barmaid's attention with an impatient snapping of fingers, and the woman scurries to them, a smiling mask plastered over unmistakable fear.

Margo shoots Bull a quick look. He nods and makes a gesture with his hand that mimes something like reeling in a fish. Right. Start with drawing the audience in. She's going to have to find a common denominator. She surveys the crowd. There are roughly as many women as there are men, and by her estimation the Vints are outnumbered by the locals at a ratio of about one to six. There are quite a few locals who do not look magically inclined. What might go over well?

Since nothing creates solidarity across the gender and class divide quite like a story of a drunken cuckolded husband and a clever wife, Margo launches into Seven Drunken Nights. Timeless universals, and all that.

As I went home on a Monday night as drunk as drunk could be  
I saw a horse outside the door where my old horse should be

It takes a few stanzas, but then heads begin to turn — probably because the lyrics are unfamiliar, but also, judging by the expressions, because the local audience wasn't really expecting a humorous register. Margo continues with the song, while trying to read the reactions. Most morph to cautiously amused quickly enough.

As the song's apocryphal wife claims her lover's horse is a milk cow, his hat is a chamber pot, and his pipe is a tin whistle — to the gullible husband's doubtful but ultimately accepting head-scratching — the audience gradually warms to Margo. When she gets to Thursday night, when the husband finds the conspicuous boots sticking out from under his wife's bed, not only is Margo getting a few feet to stomp along, but there are grins here and there, especially from the locals who aren't mages — she supposes marital problems are closer to home for them. Since the last two verses of the original song were considered entirely too lewd to sing publicly, Margo uses one of the sanitized versions. By the time she reaches the Sunday verse, in which the hapless husband returns from his drunken binge in the wee hours to a fellow running out of his wife's house with his pants still down, loud guffaws and knee-slaps ensue. She voices the wife with exaggeratedly impatient shrewdness.

Oh, you're drunk, you're drunk, you silly old fool, and still you cannot see  
Twas nothing but the tax collector the Empress sent to me

Appreciative chuckles drift from a table of female mages to her right. She grins back, and plays up the rasp of her contralto to emphasize the drunken cluelessness of the song's narrator.

Well, it's many a night I've travelled, a hundred miles or more  
But an Orlesian that could last all night I never saw before

The room booms with laughter, as Margo's variant flips the raunchy humor into a nationalist slur. Her substitution works well enough — the Ferelden part of the assembled audience is more than happy to have a good laugh at Orlais's expense. The Vints smile thinly.

Margo spots Solas gliding around the room. As he passes the patrons, he turns his absurd hat over with a theatrical flourish, and Margo can hear coins clink into its depths. The cluster of Vints doesn't tip. If anything can confirm them as evil, it is that.

She throws a glance at Bull's table. There has been some castling on the metaphorical chessboard. Dorian is now occupying what used to be Bull's seat — the one with the bear pelt as a backdrop. He is sprawled in his chair with an expression of jaded indifference and a glass of wine that he twirls idly in his fingers. Bull, next to him, has adopted the relaxed-but-alert pose that Margo associates with professional goons, thugs, and shady businessmen's personal bodyguards.

Solas, bless him, walks up to her table and hands her a mug of honeyd tea. Margo mouths a thank you. He stops, his back to the room, and positions himself such that he partially shields her from the audience. Margo smiles into the cup. The elf does have rather nice shoulders for someone with an otherwise narrow frame. Which, of course, is probably not the appropriate thought to have at the moment, but coping mechanisms, and all that. He leans in, his lips close to her ear.

"Strive to irritate Redcliffe's new masters, but be cautious. The mercenary on the right has throwing knifes. I can discretely tamper with a hostile spell. Less so a blade." He resumes his rounds.

Margo sets the tea down, and picks up the vihuela. There are some hoots from the audience, and demands for another song. She hesitates. She needs something that simultaneously cuts through the mages' dejection and grates on the Vints, but with enough wiggle room where, if confronted, she could say it wasn't about them at all. Right. Plausible deniability. She's got the perfect candidate.

One morning when I woke up  
Oh fare thee well, fare thee well, fare thee well, well, well  
One morning when I woke up  
I found the slavers at my door

There is a reason, of course, that the original song has been used by leftist revolutionary movements and every other rebel group since its origins with Italian anti-fascist partisans during World War II. The tune is ridiculously, stupidly catchy. And the rhythm of the lyrics is easy to tweak. It did not take Margo long to adapt the song to the politics of Thedas, with a little help from her nice new friend Brother Genitivi. She replaces partisans with rebel mages but keeps the enemy vague, invoking the shadow of slavery instead of pointing the finger more predictably at the Templars. The theme is the same, however. And, in the end, she supposes it's always the same — about someone willing to put their life on the line and die for a cause, because the alternative is unlivable.

Next time you see me, I will be smiling  
Oh fare thee well, fare thee well, fare thee well, well, well  
I'll be in prison, or on the gallows  
Because our freedom's not for sale

She doesn't look around as she sings — instead, she lets her eyes drift out of focus and delivers the lyrics with an amused smirk. The room with each stanza falls into deeper silence. By the last verse, when the would-be rebel makes the final request to his comrades — a verse Margo transformed specifically with a mage audience in mind — the quiet is downright eerie.

When I die fighting against oppression  
Oh fare thee well, fare thee well, fare thee well, well, well  
Carry my body up to the mountain  
And guide my soul across the Veil

She finishes, her heart hammering at breakneck speed. There is a long, uncomfortable pause. And then, from the table where the group of female mages sits — two of them, Margo notices, are elves — she hears a loud, "You sing true, sister!" Then, as if this gives the assembled patrons permission, there are quite a few loud cheers and pounding of fists on tables. But there are also insults hurled. The audience fractures into interpretive camps, and there are as many "Void take the Templars and their Chantry" as there are "'D'ya hear the bit about not selling out our freedom? It's about elves, you numpty" — not to mention a couple of more predictably crude statements about the shape of one's ears and the shape of one's ass addressed to Margo directly — and it's all met with counter-insults until the room progressively fills with the roar of animated chatter. Margo looks up to see the contingent of Vints observing her with the cold, lifeless eyes of people long since comfortable with murder, or worse. One of the cutthroats gets up, walks briskly to the door, and exits the tavern.

Margo looks around. Solas, who has stopped gathering tips and has found a somewhat unobtrusive stretch of wall to lean against, is watching her with an odd expression. Bull and Dorian are still performing their nobleman-and-his-bodyguard still life. The Qunari gives her a tiny little nod when she catches his gaze and makes a gesture of closing his fist, which Margo interprets as him ordering her to take a break. Since the catgut strings have a tendency to loosen rather quickly, Margo occupies herself with retuning the vihuela.

Task completed, Margo decides — in retrospect, with completely irrational optimism — that perhaps she has the time to buy herself a mug of ale and a bite to eat before she has to resume her political agitating. She is making her way towards the bar when the tavern door is flung open and in strolls an older fellow in a ridiculous sort of hood — from where Margo is standing, she could swear it has little ears — with a retinue of completely terrified mages alongside perfectly self-assured ruffian-for-hire types. The Vint who had left earlier brings up the rear. The din in the tavern fizzles out. The fellow with the ear-shaped protrusions on his hood surveys the assembled crowd with unmistakable distaste, until his eyes fall on Dorian. And then his face breaks into a smile, and he makes his way to the table by the bear pelt. Margo catches Solas's gaze. The elf's jaw tightens — which confirms Margo's suspicion that the hooded man is the much-feared magister.

The new arrival settles across from Dorian, and the waitress rushes past Margo with an expression that looks both hateful and eager to please.

Margo decides to make herself scarce until explicitly called upon, but her vague hopes for dinner have been dispelled as quickly as they materialize. She catches Dorian gesturing her over with a lazy wave. Great.

She walks over slowly, trying to buy herself some time to assess the infamous Magister Alexius. His skin is timeworn and a little pockmarked, but he has the sort of face that looks like it was no stranger to laughter at one point, but then the laugh lines fell into disuse. He casts her a perfunctory glance, then turns back to Dorian.

Margo stops a few feet away. Since she's not sure what the script for this particular performance is, she decides to play it safe and adopts the self-effacing demeanor of almost every other city elf she has come across. Dorian, after a brief pause, motions her to take a seat next to him, and so Margo walks over, lowers herself into the chair, and places the vihuela flat on her lap.

"I see you have managed to avail yourself of some basic comforts of civilization, Dorian. I must admit, I was surprised when I heard you had returned." Alexius picks up the goblet of wine the waitress deposited in front of him and drains half of it in a single gulp. Margo notes that there is a slight tremor to his fingers. This close, she can also see the heavy bags under the man's eyes. She wonders what might be ailing the magister — perhaps the task of keeping the local mages under his boot is proving harrowing.

"We had our disagreements, Gereon. I will not lie that I have resolved them for myself. But I have come to believe your work here is foundational for our understanding of magical theory. Not to mention that your presence has political implications for our homeland. Neither factor can I easily walk away from, as I am sure you realize."

Alexius drains the rest of his wine. "Yes. You were wise to procure a bodyguard. I find the situation here in the south is intolerably volatile. Keeping this pitiful backwater from imploding has taken entirely too much of my attention." He drums his fingers on the table irritably. "Be that as it may, I am pleased that you have returned — you will, of course, come stay with me at the keep. There is little time to lose. I am so close to a breakthrough, and your help will be indispensable. Now, where is that incompetent serving girl? She was meant to come back with the bottle."

Margo steals a covert glance at Dorian. If the mage is unnerved by this announcement — or by the Magister's apparently robust drinking habit — he lets none of it show. Bull's expression remains stoically indifferent as well.

"Gereon, I certainly appreciate the offer of hospitality, but I assure you, we are perfectly comfortable..."

Alexius waves this away with an impatient gesture. "Nonsense. This pitiful excuse for an inn is beneath you. The only reason I am here is that I had business in the village and heard that you'd returned and were entertaining yourself by causing some kind of unrest via your minstrel. And since I was in the vicinity..."

At this, Alexius casts another — this time unpleasantly curious — glance at Margo.

"Tell me, girl. What did your master have you sing to get this sorry lot to do more than bleat dim-wittedly? It is all I have seen them capable of. Surely my former pupil would not attempt to undermine me in some circuitous way? Not if he understood why my work is so crucial."

Margo swallows. There is something profoundly off about the Magister's tone — a kind of underlying wobble she can't quite put her finger on. Not to mention that the statement smacks of paranoia — even if, in this case, Alexius is not that far off the mark. She opens her mouth to speak, but before she can attempt to bullshit her way through it, Dorian interjects.

"Undermine you, Gereon? With crude ditties about unfaithful wives and some simplistic little tune meant to remind the local mages of their lot under the southern Chantry? Do not be ridiculous. But the girl does have some talent — I would not have kept her otherwise. I can have her sing something for you, if you wish. To pass the time."

Margo wants to glare Dorian into oblivion, but before she can test whether incinerating people with her gaze might have been one of Maile's hidden talents, Solas appears, carrying a bottle of wine. He turns to Dorian. "The barkeep requested that I bring this up for you — master . The waitress is indisposed."

Dorian nods, and Solas places the bottle on the table. Alexius reaches for it immediately and pours himself a glass, then offers to top off Dorian's. Solas retreats to the back wall. Margo notes that the elf's jaw is set in a way that highlights the sharpness of his features, which his patently amiable expression usually smooths over. He is practically crackling with repressed fury.

Margo's attention is drawn by a movement from Bull. He brings his fist to his chest and taps it over his heart a few times. To an outside observer, it might look like he's dealing with heartburn. She doubts it's anything so pedestrian. More likely Bull is conveying one of his unspoken messages. Right. Pick something that might have emotional resonance for the magister — something that might get to him, in other words.

"I would be happy to sing for you," Margo says quietly, forcing her expression into an approximation of demureness.

"Sing, then," Alexius acquiesces. "But have a care that you do not bore. Do not waste my time with primitive limericks designed to amuse peasants. I do not suffer idiocy lightly. "

Fuck you , Margo thinks. Let's see how you like this one. She had to modify the song quite heavily to scrub the details that anchored it to her own world. But the chords are simple enough, and her voice lends the melody a different kind of edge — less youthful defiance, more fatalistic fury. More importantly, the original message captures something of what she sees in the mood of the assembled mages and, strangely enough, in Alexius himself — a kind of desperate, brittle nihilism brought on by the awareness that the end is already here.

Come you masters of war  
You whose armies have come  
You that weave the death spells  
You that wield all the bombs  
You that hide behind walls  
You that hide behind desks  
I just want you to know I can see through your masks

Margo's adapted lyrics are full of substitutions, but they blend local flavor into the song's original formula. Yet, the meaning of the anti-Vietnam war anthem shifts subtly — even though its barbs mostly hit the same marks. She guesses that the image of young people dying brutal deaths in some mindless, faceless war is something that everyone in the room understands all too well. She keeps the enemy vague enough: for an audience of mostly Fereldans and Free Marchers, that the nemesis might be Tevinters with their magic or Qunari with their gaatlok or Orlesians with their Game is fortuitous. Some substitutions took finagling. She switches the invocation of Judas for a reference to the Old Gods — whatever they are. And, since she is not sure whether the social organization of Thedas is capitalist in the strict sense of the term, she replaces money with power — since the two are not necessarily equivalent in her new context. But most are easy: arrows for bullets, swords for guns.

You aim the quick arrows  
For others to fire  
And you sit back and watch  
As the death count gets higher  
You hide in your fortress  
As the young people's blood  
Flows out of their bodies  
And is buried in the mud

She doesn't look up until the stanza where the song levies what to Margo has always felt like its pivotal indictment. And then she fixes her gaze on Alexius. This one, she didn't have to modify at all.

You've thrown the worst fear  
That can ever be hurled  
Fear to bring children  
Into this world  
And for threatening my baby  
Unborn and unnamed  
You ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins

As she hears herself sing the words, Margo realizes that her delivery is turning for the eerily venomous — either as a result of her own barely acknowledged anxiety over the possibility of her body's pregnancy, or because it is yet another reminder of her daughter and the life she never got to live.

From there, hardly any substitutions are needed — the rest maps well enough. She replaces Jesus with Andraste, disregarding the slight hitch in the rhythm.

There is one, terrifying moment where Margo gets precipitously close to fucking up. When she sings her slightly tweaked version of the verse where the narrator denies its hypothetical interlocutor any chance at redemption — "I think you will find, when the death takes its toll, all the power you gathered will never earn back your soul " — she looks up, and catches sight of Solas, who is still leaning against the back wall. She almost fumbles. The elf has turned as pale as a shroud, his eyes dark and sharp and fixed on her like he has seen an apparition. She looks away quickly, lest his strange reaction distract her and she blurt something that'll give her away.

By the time Margo gets to the final stanza, you could hear a pin drop. Alexius is staring at her with creepy focus — the derisive boredom wiped from his features.

She prudently fixes her gaze on the floorboards. The last verse is the one she modified the most, to account for the funeral traditions she's seen in Thedas so far. And also to give it a bit more of a bite.

And I hope that you die  
And your death will come soon  
By the blaze of your pyre  
On a late afternoon  
I will watch as you crumble  
Into your deathbed  
Then I'll spit on your ashes  
And cheer that you're dead

There is a long silence. Margo ventures a look. Her three companions are staring at her with an assortment of muffled expressions. Dorian's is a mixture of surprise and alarm, Bull's is, for lack of a better word, one of bloodthirsty solidarity, and Solas's is... Margo has no idea.

In the silence, Alexius's slow clap is deafening.

"I will grant you this, Dorian. Your little bird has pluck. An entertaining feature in this spineless morass of a town." The magister gets up, polishes off the rest of his wine, and flicks his hand over at his retinue, scattered around a nearby table. Then he returns his gaze to Dorian. "Come, my friend. Gather your things." The gesture that accompanies the order encompasses Margo, Bull, and Solas in addition to their bags. "Enough of these rustic clods. Let us return to the castle."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by three different songs. Seven Drunken Nights and Masters of War are fairly famous in popular culture in general, so probably need little introduction. The song in the middle is a translation/modified version of Bella Ciao._

 _Next up: Redcliffe castle, time travel shenanigans (sort of), and general unpleasantness._


	42. Chapter 42: Sympathy for the Devil

_In which Redcliffe castle contains all manner of unpleasantness._

 _Chapter warning: this one contains canon-typical violence, and is generally on the bleak side, so you know. Gird your loins._

* * *

The castle is in disrepair. Not just because the keep itself is old — although that is certainly the case, the very walls covered in the woven histories of their previous occupants. But it's more than that. There is something unkempt about the hallways, as if whoever inhabits the space now is no longer concerned with maintaining appearances. The strange, dreamlike quality she noticed in the cloud of time-slowing fairy dust in the village is stronger here, but also more diffuse, and Margo keeps blinking to try to get her eyes to focus properly.

They are led through a maze of little passages into a hall that she guesses serves as Alexius's dining room. A large table stands in the center, covered in a tablecloth stained with the ghosts of repasts past. An assortment of dishes in various states of edibility litter its surface, as if no one is cleaning the previous meal's leftovers before bringing in the next one.

"Come, come. Sit." Alexius gestures for Dorian to take the chair at the head of the table, to the right of a throne-like construction that presumably hosts the illustrious ass of whomever the current head of household might be. Dorian walks over confidently and plops down in a relaxed if slightly bored pose, by all appearances perfectly at ease in these surroundings. Bull, silent and stone-faced, his gaze focused straight ahead, comes to stand behind the back of Dorian's chair, thumbs hooked into his belt. Margo and Solas stop simultaneously at a respectful distance, waiting for further instructions.

"Good, good! Make yourself at home, Dorian. Are you hungry? Have your servant bring us some sustenance. The help here is too terrified to be of much use these days." Alexius rubs his face with a pale, bony hand. "I shouldn't have used some of them to power the first spells, I suppose, but what is done is done."

"Solas," Dorian gestures with a flick of his fingers. "Be a good man. Go fetch us something from the kitchens, would you? Which way, Gereon?"

The magister gestures through a doorway. "Through there and down the stairs. He cannot miss it."

"Of course, master ."

Margo stands still, eyes downcast, not daring to look at the elf's retreating frame. She doesn't have to look to guess what might be going through his mind — she catches a faint whiff of ozone, as if his magic crackles, barely contained, beneath the subservient mask. Margo hopes Alexius is too preoccupied to notice.

"Watch out for that one. Terribly hard to train if they're not born into it. You. Little bird. Come closer, now, I don't bite."

Margo's legs carry her forward, and she comes to stand at the left of Dorian's chair. Alexius examines her, his lips twisted in a slightly derisive smirk.

"She is entirely too fractious to make a proper servant, you know. Where did you procure her?" This close, Alexius reminds Margo of a lizard. One of those poisonous ones that will bite you, and then follow you around until you croak, so that they can scarf you up without too much resistance.

Dorian yawns lazily into his fist, picks up a goblet of wine, and sniffs its contents. He sets it back down. "Oh, from the usual swamp — you know how the south is. She's got a pleasant enough voice, and she does what she's told, by and large."

Alexius laughs, the sound mirthless. "You've changed, my friend. Your father would be proud."

Dorian's face doesn't alter — and, with a quick glance at the mage, Margo decides that this effort at indifference costs him. "I suppose we all need to grow up at some point." His tone is pitched to a careful neutral.

Solas materializes in the doorway with a tray of bread and cheese, a bottle of wine, and two goblets. Alexius pays absolutely no attention as the elf sets the food and drink on the table and retreats against a nearby column, behind Dorian and Bull. He might as well be a piece of moving tapestry — although, come to think of it, a moving tapestry might garner more interest.

"Indeed, we do." Margo can feel the magister's gaze land on her once again — he looks like he is assessing a horse or a hound. He points a finger at the chair opposite Dorian. "Sit, girl."

He returns his attention to Dorian. "My experiments will be much facilitated now that you are back, my friend. With you at my side, I can finally run the simulations — no more of this blind blundering in the dark. I would, in fact, like to undertake one shortly, with your assistance. There is little time to waste."

Dorian cuts himself a slice of cheese, fills the two goblets with wine, and hands one to his former mentor. Alexius drains his glass in a single gulp, then reaches for the bottle and pours himself more, filling the goblet to the brim. He drains that as well but doesn't touch the food. Margo estimates that this is at least four large glasses of wine consumed in about an hour.

"Certainly. You will have to explain to me how far your studies have progressed, but I would, of course, happily assist. Your work has always been fascinating." Dorian pauses, and looks around. "How is Felix?"

Margo watches surreptitiously as the magister's lined face grows grim and, for the briefest of moments, deep heartbreak flashes in his eyes — an expression that makes him look bizarrely, uncomfortably vulnerable.

"Worse. But I am so close. I know I am. If I can only…" Suddenly, his face turns to Margo. "Tell me, girl. Have you any children? You little gutter rats tend to breed young." He turns to Dorian, apparently set on explaining his sudden conversation with the domestic fauna. "I find that women often have more understanding of what it is like. Even in the slums, you will find genuine sentiment when children are concerned. It elevates them slightly above the morass of their baser being."

Dorian retains his slightly bored expression. He shrugs noncommittally. The older man's attention returns to Margo. "Well? Have you?"

Margo levels what she hopes is a calm stare at the magister. "Yes, my lord. I had a daughter. She died of an incurable illness when she was young."

A ringing silence descends over them for a few moments. Margo can feel the others' attention shift to her, but she doesn't break eye contact. She stares into Alexius's brown irises and wills him to recall himself under the crust of nihilistic disenchantment. If everything he is doing is on behalf of his child, maybe there is still a man who can be reached. Ivan hadn't spiraled out of control until after their daughter's death — until then, he had clung to hope, just like she had. Maybe like this man does, and for that, she cannot fault him.

"Perhaps that is what I heard in your song at the tavern, then." Alexius leans in. His breath smells of sour wine and an unhealthy sort of odor that puts Margo in mind of burning plastic. She associates the smell with lyrium. "Yes. I can see it in you. An old wound that will never stop oozing, right... over... here." He jams his finger into her chest, over her heart. His dirty fingernail leaves a pale indentation in the exposed skin over the collar of her tunic. The touch makes Margo's skin crawl. The magister's expression veers towards the reptilian again. "You know Dorian, I like that desolation in her eyes. Very... stirring. It reminds me that Felix is still among us, and this means there is time for us yet. Time to fix it. I wonder if you would consider lending your little bird to me for a time?"

Margo grits her teeth. What was she thinking? It's not her job to try to reach this man, to dull his broken edges, no matter that she recognizes that grief in his eyes, and he in hers, however ugly the words he clothes the sentiment in might be. If she were a better woman, perhaps she could attempt to break through. Work on him, leverage this to their advantage. But she isn't a better woman. The magister can go fuck a log. No one was there to save Ivan from himself. She sure as hell hadn't been enough. And no one was there to save her either. Only Baba and Jake, in bottomless, heartbroken sorrow. The world is all that is the case.

Right. The problem with trying to have sympathy for the devil is that the devil is still a monumental asshat, only also whingy. She owes this piece of shit no succor.

Whatever Alexius sees in her eyes, he doesn't like it. His face hardens.

"So." Dorian's tone is just a little clipped. "What are you working on? Shall we commence right away? You spoke of simulation — is it related to our work on time and continuity?"

Dorian's intervention distracts Alexius from his rather hostile leering — Margo has the distinct impression the magister is trying to drown out his demons in whatever vice is most expediently available at any given moment, and that opportunism makes him unpredictable and dangerous. Alexius claps his hands once. "Quite right. Yes. No time like the present. Should we relocate to my office? No, no, we will do this right here. It is a simple simulation after all — it should allow me to have a quick peek into the past, test a few more variables without having to complete the spell fully."

Before Dorian can protest, Alexius extracts something from beneath his leather vest, and Margo notes that the collar of his shirt, likely a crisp white at one point, is stained with yellowish gray.

The magister's hand reveals an amulet. It looks to Margo like a cube of malachite. Alexius's eyes sparkle to life when he stares at the stone.

"Yes. We will do this now. I have an excellent feeling about this one."

"Gereon, wait. We should perhaps send the rest of them out of range, don't you think?"

The magister waves his hand. "It's only a simulation, Dorian. An illusion. They should not be affected. This is trifling compared to what this little wonder can do. All I need is for you to use a nullification enchantment when the static charge builds up around the amulet and redirect some of the energy into the ambient aura — don't forget to project it behind the barrier spell — until the field is stable. Here, have your bodyguard take a step back." The magister pours himself another glass of wine and gulps it down. Margo fidgets nervously. That's number five. Is being sloshed a contraindication for performing magic?

"What about her?" A muscle in the side of Dorian's cheek is twitching involuntarily. Shit. Whatever Alexius thinks he is about to do is clearly not receiving Dorian's seal of approval as far as safety is concerned.

"Who? Oh, yes. I had forgotten." Alexius leans forward, looking especially reptilian as he does. His fingers curl around Margo's wrist. "Would you like to see something truly unique, girl?" Margo forces herself not to shudder in revulsion. "This, my dear, is the sort of magic that one might behold once in a generation. It took your master and me many years to develop the prototype."

"Gereon, I do not believe..."

"Hush, my pupil. Now be a good sport, and follow my lead."

And then, the magister begins to weave his spell. The feeling of unreality ratchets up, until Margo is fairly certain that the entire experience is just the fading memory of a nightmare. The table and walls stretch and wobble, as if pulled through an invisible funnel. And the last thing she hears before being sucked into the distortion vortex is Alexius's irritated exclamation: "No, no, the other way!"

And then the world crumbles.

* * *

Margo comes to on the stone floor of a cell, the space illuminated faintly by a reddish glow. She turns her head slowly, trying to determine where she is. It looks like a dungeon. None of it feels real — although it doesn't feel like the Fade, either. And then the whole unpleasantness with Alexius comes crashing back, and she clambers to her feet. She is alone. Judging by the presence of rusty metal bars, she is locked in, but when she moves to rattle her cage — because that seems like the time-honored if cliched strategy — she notices that the door is, in fact, ajar.

The source of the reddish glow turns out to be a giant crimson crystal, except that it doesn't behave like a mineral should. For one, it pulsates — which no self-respecting crystalline structure ought to be doing. And second, it is exceptionally noisy. Like a shortwave radio, except if the antenna were in fact implanted inside Margo's own skull. And the music selection could use some improvement: it sounds to her like the acoustic love child of nails on a chalkboard and the world's most annoying wind chime. She steps away from the nasty thing and bumps into Dorian.

"Ah! Are you all right? It would seem that Alexius's spell has gone awry, does it not?"

"Has anyone told you that you have a knack for euphemisms?"

Dorian smiles, but his expression is uneasy, his eyes scanning their surroundings with increasing confusion. "This, whatever it is, does not appear to be quite real. A simulation, indeed, but of what?"

"I suppose we should go find out," Margo retorts, with bravado she doesn't feel at all.

They don't make it very far before they encounter a guard. He pays them zero attention. They might as well be invisible. Dorian passes his hand in front of the man's helmet.

Suddenly, the guard collapses, a spray of red droplets swirling around him in a bloody mist.

"Did you do that?" Margo hisses.

"No!" Dorian frowns. "He is being used to power blood magic — not by me, mind you — but..."

"What in the Void is happening?" Margo steps away from the convulsing body on the ground. If the guard's unexplainable demise is coincidental… Is this prerecorded? "Dorian, could this be a memory?"

The mage looks around once again, his gaze growing distant for a few moments, before his brow creases in a frown.

"Yes, something like a memory, but not exactly. Some sort of construct, perhaps? Although, to be perfectly honest, this feels to me like a... possibility."

Margo nods. "A model?"

"Not quite. For a simulation, its structure is too uneven, for lack of a better term. Let us see if we can find some answers."

Slowly, they move through the castle. More of the garrison members get utilized to power the blood magic cast by some invisible force. Dorian and Margo don't stay to watch, leaving the gruesome ballet to play itself out on its own. They quickly discover that they cannot interact with any of the objects. At one point, Margo reaches for a book on a crooked, partially broken shelf. It feels like her fingers grasp the spine for a second, but then the tome is back to where it was, and the only thing she's grasping is air.

"Curious," Dorian comments.

If the castle was in disrepair before, it is an utter mess now. That strange red crystal grows from walls in huge, amorphous masses, like some kind of mineral tumor, and Margo winces at its dissonant humming whenever they pass a particularly large growth. It is the only thing that feels real in the place.

"Do not fondle the strange mineral," Dorian warns, his voice simultaneously sarcastic and alarmed, when Margo reaches a tentative finger towards one of the glowing shards. "We have no idea what this does."

"All right," Margo nods. "No fondling."

"No fondling," Dorian confirms, a little distractedly, and Margo shudders against the creeping panic icing down her spine, because if Dorian can't focus on his own joke, then they are well and truly fucked.

By the time they make it to what turns out to be the first dungeon, Margo's teeth are chattering. In part because it is absolutely freezing — clearly, no one is bothering with heating the place. The cold, at least, feels real enough. And in part because as they make their way down the stone staircase she recognizes the voice of the man who is singing below.

"Three hundred bottles of beer on the wall. Three hundred bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around. Ugh."

They hurry down the steps.

The first thing she notices is the red glow in the Qunari's eye and the crimson tendrils that waft around his head.

Bull startles and stares at Dorian, then at her.

"You're not dead," he states accusatorially. "You're supposed to be dead. I saw them dump your corpse over the ramparts myself." His voice doubles with a strange echo. He turns to Dorian. "And last time I heard, you were in Tevinter, taking your rightful seat in the Magisterium."

"What?" Dorian looks horrified.

"Dead?" Margo asks simultaneously. "Are we... What is this?"

"Bull, when are we?" Dorian's expression is stricken.

The Qunari shrugs. "What do you mean, 'when'? We're after everything went to shit. If you want more specific dates... My guess? About a year since the Boss went to Redcliffe. They don't give us a calendar, mind you, so I'm a bit fuzzy."

Margo frowns. Redcliffe? Hadn't Evie gone to the Templars? Unless this is a simulation of the alternative choice?

"Dorian," Margo swallows. "Why is he interacting with us? Why is he real?"

Dorian shakes his head. "I do not know that he is. Although that red glow..."

"You know I can hear you, right? Yeah, I'm at least as real as you, Vint. And that glowing shit you're seeing is red lyrium. If I'm lucky, it'll kill me. If not, I just hope I die fighting."

"Can we get him out of that cage?" Margo asks. Before Dorian can respond, she tries to pull on the bars, but it's no use. They are, for all intents and purposes, phantoms. Her fingers go right through the metal.

"Wait. What about him?" Dorian turns to Bull. "Is it possible for us to interact physically?"

A trace of humor creeps into Bull's lyrium-stained eye. "Never used to be a problem, as far as you and I were concerned. 'Interacted' plenty, especially after all the shit started collapsing around our ears. It was a good two months, all things considered." Margo watches understanding dawn in Dorian's eyes. The shock on his features would be comical, if it weren't for Bull's expression. The Qunari's face is completely unguarded, and utterly bereft. "Ah. What are you, from some kind of past? I'd say the whole phantom thing gives it away, but that look on your face... Hasn't really happened for you yet, huh. Guess it might never. Well, we made the best of it. Should've told me that you Vints had reeducators, though. I would've at least tried to pull you out."

Whatever this cryptic message means, Dorian clearly understands it, because he blanches. "Oh. So that is how they got me into the Magisterium." His tone is bone-dry. "My father finally got his way, it appears."

"Dorian," Margo calls softly. "Can your magic help break him out?"

The mage collects himself with a visible effort. "It is certainly worth the attempt. Bull, I will throw an augmentation spell on you — strive to break the lock, will you?

"Hell yeah. Worth a shot."

It's over in less than ten seconds. A flare of silver surrounds the Qunari, and with a strong kick he dislodges the rusty metal door.

"Ah... That felt good . Almost like old times. Let's get out of here." Bull walks out of the cage, his shoulder brushing against Dorian's robe. Margo can hear the rustle of fabric. Dorian's eyes widen. "See, told you. I'm real. If we can, let's see if Solas is still alive. I lost track of him months ago."

They follow the Qunari up the stairs.

"Bull, what happened with Alexius?"

"Don't fret about Alexius, Blondie. It's his Elder One you need to be worried about. He assassinated the empress of Orlais, used the confusion to invade the south. With an army of demons. Have you ever fought a demon army? I don't recommend it. In fact, I'm guessing they're headed this way. That's why there are so few guards around — Alexius has used them all for blood magic. Not sure what he's trying to do. My guess is that he's not looking forward to his boss being back, either."

Elder One? Whatever that is, it bodes poorly.

"Why hasn't he used you?" Margo winces. "Sorry."

Bull shrugs. "I guess that red shit he made us eat fucks with his spells."

By the time they get to the second dungeon, Margo has almost managed to convince herself that all of this is some utterly horrid hallucination, and that the best thing to do is to take it with a grain of salt. Or a sprinkle. Or perhaps a couple of pounds — no such thing as too much salt, right?

And then another cluster of cells looms down a staircase.

"Is someone there?"

Oh, merciful universe, no. The ground drops from under her, and Margo has to grab onto Dorian's arm for stability. The mage rights her and nods briefly.

"Yeah, that's how I felt, too, when I heard you two stroll in," Bull comments, with a quick glance at her.

They walk down. It's all she can do not to run. It's an illusion, she reminds herself. A model. Nothing but a model. There, on the right, a movement. She recognizes the damn sweater.

When the elf turns around from his pacing, Margo practically staggers under the impact — even though, of course, she isn't surprised at all to see that his eyes, too, are backlit with crimson. Solas's gaze focuses on her, and for a brief moment his expression is full of desperate hope, until it morphs to disbelief, and then into angry denial.

"You are alive? No." He shakes his head. "No, it cannot be."

"Solas, this may seem strange, but this is a spell. We are caught in Alexius's time modeling." Dorian exhales. "Although I believe his casting was destabilized, so it would appear that the spell is modeling the future, not the past as I had expected."

Solas's gaze flicks to Dorian, then returns to Margo. He walks over to the front of the cage, long elegant fingers curling around the metal bars. "A model? Has this world not yet come to pass?"

"In a sense. In fact, I am reasonably sure that it cannot come to pass considering its main precondition will not be met." Dorian sounds pleased with himself, but his expression remains uneasy.

"Bull, can you get him out?" Margo's voice comes out almost steady.

"Sure thing, Blondie. Dorian? A little help?"

Their previous maneuver is successful once again.

Solas staggers out of the cell but then straightens slowly. A slouch remains — he carries himself like a man weighed down by time, as if twenty years have passed and not just one. "It is difficult to conceive of this as a mere model. It is real to me. I am... aware of myself, and capable of thought." He looks at Margo again. "This... No. A model could not replicate..." His face crumbles into pure anguish before he rearranges the pieces into a passable mask. The gesture he begins is aborted midway, and his hands drop to his sides.

"Yeah, that's what I told them, but they insist they're the only real ones around here. Meanwhile, who can bust up the furniture, hmm?" Bull shakes his head and kicks at the bars of the cage.

Margo casts a quick look at Dorian, but his expression is slightly lost. She turns to Solas, trying to slow down her madly beating heart. "Solas. In your reality, what happened?"

The elf takes a deep breath. There is an unpleasant rattle to the sound of it. "The Herald chose to confront Alexius and rescue the Redcliffe mages. She was captured, along with those who accompanied her. Cassandra, Vivienne, and Blackwall are dead." Solas's lips press into a grim line, but he forces himself to continue, his tone almost clinical. "Without the Herald and Cassandra, the Inquisition disintegrated. Bull, Leliana, you, and I attempted to sneak into the castle and find the Herald. I..." He shakes his head. "We knew she was alive."

Margo digs her nails into her hands, wishing desperately to wake up. It does her no good.

"Bull has informed you of the Elder One and his demon army?"

"Yes."

"They are near," he says simply.

"What will happen when they arrive?" Their eyes meet. Solas's irises are almost completely swallowed by the red shimmer.

"At a guess? They will raze this place to the ground."

On impulse, she reaches for his hand. His fingers are material — still cool against hers, but with a deep, almost imperceptible tremor. "Oh, ma'nas," he whispers, and Margo lets out a choked sob. There is no way in hell this is just a model. A model wouldn't call her this. She takes his other hand, and he twines his fingers through hers.

"Ahem. Margo — you two take a few moments to talk. I do have some questions I would like to ask Bull, and it would seem you have your own discussion pending, yes?" Dorian's tone is tense.

"You just want one more ride for the road, Vint. I know you."

Dorian mutters a profanity under his breath, but the two walk up the stairs and out of earshot.

Margo turns to Solas, and she almost doesn't wince when his gaze finds hers again. "Can this be fixed? Solas, I can't just let you..."

He shakes his head. "No, vhenan. It cannot be fixed. I am dying. This world is... a terrible mistake. An abomination. If you are able, you must obviate it at all costs." He lets out a slow breath. "But you have already given me hope by suggesting that this is nothing but an unrealized possibility, no matter what my own experience tells me. Now you must take the knowledge that it offers and deploy it against the chance that this reality may come to pass."

She squeezes his fingers more tightly. "Tell me what you have learned. What became of Evie?"

His expression is grim. "Alexius completed the Rite of Tranquility. It left the Herald much more damaged than an ordinary Tranquil. Although I suspect this was intentional. She is able to perform some basic bodily functions without assistance. But she is not much more than a shell that hosts the mark's magic." He disentangles his hands from Margo's grasp and cups her face, fingers trembling slightly against her skin. "Ir abelas. I am so sorry. I know you cared... care for her."

Margo feels the tears trail down her cheeks, but it is the least of her worries. "What else? Haven? The others?"

He shakes his head, his gaze bereft. "Varric? Sera? Please, Solas. Tell me some of them made it out."

His thumbs trace her cheekbones, his touch soft. "It is possible. Both Sera and Varric vanished shortly after we were captured. I have no news besides. I believe Josephine and Cullen may yet live."

"And Torq—... Leliana?"

Another negative headshake. "I'm sorry, ma'nas. She was captured with us." The doubling of his voice sets Margo's teeth on edge. His hands trail down to her neck, then along her shoulders. Finally, as if leaping off some internal and invisible edge, he encircles her waist and pulls her against him. This close, she can hear the lyrium hum. "Oh, vhenan, to touch you again... I didn't think..." He trails off, and Margo watches his throat work as he swallows.

"I take it that you and I became lovers in the end." Margo ventures a tentative smile, because she can't stand that tortured look. "At least this shitty version did one thing right."

That gets her a surprised, slightly breathless chuckle. "Yes. We did. Too briefly in retrospect, although the blame is mine." His smile is impossibly tender. Even in their most intimate moments, the version of Solas she is familiar with never looked at her this way. "If you happen to meet another instantiation of me, please do let him... it... me know that, in the end, his — my — stalling and pointless overcaution will be... regretted."

She brings her hands to his cheeks, his skin simultaneously feverish and icy under her touch. "Would you listen if I did?"

The smile he offers is rueful. His reddish eyes keep traveling to her lips.

"No. This wisdom seems to come only through the apprehension of one's own mortality." Solas's expression grows anguished for an instant, until he schools his features into something more neutral. "Vhenan. Will you not ask me what became of you?"

She meets his gaze. "I know I am dead in your world. That much is clear." She takes a breath, and releases it slowly. "All right. How did it happen?"

Solas's hands trail along her back and settle on her hips. This time he pulls her into him as closely as their bodies will allow — at least in this configuration. He rests his chin on the top of her head. His voice forks into a double-echo as he speaks, and she can hear the lyrium's discordant ruckus inside his chest. "You were captured, as were we all. It did not take Alexius long to learn of your unique condition. He saw potential in this knowledge for his efforts to free his son from the Blight. He began to experiment." She repositions herself to be able to see his face. Solas swallows again, and, for an instant, Margo thinks he looks ill — or, iller than he already is. "You lasted longer than many, though not as long as Leliana. To this day, I am unsure where you found the poison to end it. I was glad you did."

"Scraped it off a wall, probably. You wouldn't believe what sorts of things grow in a dank dungeon. It's the humidity." The joke falls flat. "How long ago?"

"Six months, perhaps."

Margo exhales. He's been in here for at least six months? She forces herself to swim against the current of her panicked thoughts. This is not real. It's a construct. Whatever this Solas is, it is an illusion. A model that doesn't, in fact, exist. Except that his arms around her feel solid enough, and beneath the burnt rubber smell of lyrium, she still detects a whiff of ozone.

"Solas. I have to understand. What are you?" If nothing else, if she can grasp the nature of this strange model — the real/unreal paradox of it — then maybe, just maybe, there is something that they can do to get out of it. And never let it come to pass. Because, as far as sad-sack quantum possibilities go, this one is an exceptionally shitty one.

She can feel him flinch against her, his back muscles tensing under her hands. "Oh, ma'nas. I..." He takes a shuddering breath, and then coughs, the sound doubled, like his voice. He suppresses it, and after a few moments the cough subsides. "Yes," he finally breathes. "Perhaps it is the only way to prevent this. The mistake has already been made, but it may still be possible to undo at least a portion of its potential repercussions." He exhales, seemingly steeling himself against something. Margo looks up, frowning at his expression. For the briefest of instants, what she sees there is very close to panic. Do constructs panic?

He hesitates.

"Solas, please. Help me understand. This is not the Fade, but it's also not not the Fade. I keep wandering in and out of pockets that feel more or less substantial. I can't touch anything, except, presumably, the red lyrium or anything directly affected by it."

There is a brief glimmer of surprise in his eyes, and then comprehension dawns. Solas's face shutters, a kind of deadly calm settling over him. He takes a step back, disentangling himself from her embrace, the movement the result of will more than want. "Of course. Forgive me... I misunderstood you. You are asking about the status of this..." he waves a hand around, "possibility."

Margo frowns, the confusion over his reaction raising alarm bells in the back of her mind, but she can't quite wade her way through the brain fog. Shock, apparently, is not conducive to analytical thinking. What had he thought she asked? It feels like she is missing something absolutely crucial, but her mind can't quite focus on it, the dreamlike quality of her surrounding pushing her to simply accept it, as one does the nonsensical elements of a dream.

"I do not have enough evidence to speculate — it is, after all, my reality — but Alexius's repeated experiments with the fabric of time have damaged the Veil beyond repair. It is..." he looks around, apparently searching for some kind of example to use as a demonstration, and then takes ahold of the sleeve of her jacket. His fingers pinch the material to create several folds. "It is twisted on itself, tangling the Dreaming with the Waking, without annulling the separation."

Margo strains to imagine what this would look like in practice. Well. This is what it looks like in practice.

"What about the red lyrium?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "I am unsure. Lyrium exists in both places — and the Elder One has found a way to cultivate its red variant. It is possible that Alexius discovered additional application for it. Perhaps to mark sites of interest, or pivotal moments, anchoring time and place together as he attempts to fashion a world to his liking."

Margo nods, her eyes widening. "He's using it as a marker? Like… a notch on a tree? Or a kind of safety pin, to hold different flaps of fabric together?"

"After a fashion. Although I do not know for certain. What has been done to the Fade... to this world is beyond any nightmare I could have ever conceived."

"This means that his poisoning you with the lyrium — and the fact that you seem real to me here — is epiphenomenal." She doesn't know whether that makes it better, or worse. Not to mention that she is entirely out of her depth. She needs Dorian for this discussion.

"Vhenan, you cannot linger here. If we do not know which parts of this reality affect you and which do not, then you must depart as soon as possible, no matter how enticing further information-gathering might be. It will not be long now before the Elder One's army is upon us."

"How do you know?"

He exhales sharply. "They are demons, ma'nas. However twisted they were during their crossing, they are still of the Fade. I can feel them."

"But where? Where do we go? How do we leave?"

Solas shakes his head. "Let us find the others. If we can locate an untainted pocket of the Dreaming, you may be able to use it to depart."

They find Dorian and Bull whispering quietly in the hall at the top of the stairs. Dorian's face is ashen beneath the tan, and his eyes seem to have doubled in size. Bull just looks... exhausted.

"Dorian. We must get out of here. This place is... wrong."

"Thank you, my dear, for pointing out the blatantly obvious. I have gathered as much."

"You must find a pocket of the Fade, undiluted by Alexius's time magic. It may be possible for you to affect the spell that sent you here from within it."

Dorian nods at the elf's explanation in flat acceptance, his natural curiosity drained from him.

They wander around, making their way slowly towards the top of the castle. All they find are corpses. In a room that bears the unmistakable hallmarks of a torture chamber, if the well-used rack is anything to go by, they find Leliana, or what is left of her. What remains of her face looks like the grinning skull from Margo's occasional odd visions.

They walk further.

Finally, at the very top of a wide stone staircase, in a large, cavernous hall, they discover Alexius. He looks... small. He is huddled over the body of a pale young man, and he pays the intruders no heed. The young man's eyes are vacant, a kind of subcutaneous necrosis mottling his skin.

A few feet from them is Evie's body, like a broken doll: an unneeded thing, discarded. Margo moans and looks away. No no no... Not this. Not like this.

Alexius has apparently used her in every way he could. Including, at the end, to power his spells. Evie's left arm is thrust out at an angle, the fingers of her hand curled softly, as if she is sleeping. The mark is nothing but a charred scar.

Margo doesn't know she has launched herself at the magister until she realizes she's flailing in place, Bull's massive arms restraining her.

"It is useless, vhenan." Solas's voice is quiet and heartbroken. "You must leave now."

As if in confirmation of his words, the massive doors shake under the impact of some unseen force. Margo hears strange, otherworldly screeches — half-avian, half-industrial.

Solas gestures towards a slightly raised platform at the side of the hall, where the air, to Margo's barely focusing eyes, seems tinged with a faint green shimmer, as if with the memory of a Fade rift.

"We cannot just leave you two here." Dorian's voice is furious.

"Hey. Not real, remember?" Bull rumbles a chuckle. "Now this unreal Qunari is going to kick some demon ass ." He growls demonstratively, but his eye is serious. "We can buy you a few minutes. Solas?"

"Dorian. You must attempt to unweave the spell from the inside."

Dorian frowns. "Ah, I see. Yes. Yes, especially somewhere where the connection with the Fade is stronger, I may be able to use the..."

"There is no time. Do it." Solas interrupts, his voice urgent.

The Tevinter mage sprints to the non-rift, but Margo lingers for a moment, and catches Solas's hand.

"I won't let this happen. I swear I won't let this happen." She meets his gaze. "Is there anything..." She can't quite finish.

His eyes grow soft, but his lips twist in a bitter smile. "Kiss me, vhenan. Though I am afraid I do not have the time to beg properly."

Margo blinks the tears out of her eyes — she can't see him through the blur — and chokes out a laugh. She reaches for his face, and pulls him down towards her.

He brushes his lips against hers — the ghost of a touch — but before she can settle into a proper kiss, he pulls away, and shakes his head, sorrow in his eyes. "The lyrium is real enough, ma'nas. I cannot risk contaminating you." He steps back. "Now, go."

She hesitates for another second, then sprints off towards where Dorian stands. Her throat aches with unshed tears.

For weeks after, she will have nightmares of this precise moment. She skids next to Dorian, her lungs burning and her throat constricted in a ball of incandescent pain. Behind her, the massive oak doors burst into splinters. She turns. What is beyond them is nothing her mind can process.

Insectoid. Reptilian. Arboreal. A writhing, malignant mass. Bull rushes into the fray with a dramatic bellow. Solas casts without a staff, the movements breathtakingly graceful.

"I almost have it!" Dorian cries out.

The world wobbles like a dream bubble. The seething mass of creatures bursts into the hall, their screeches echoing off the stone walls.

Bull's lifeless body skids down the stones like a giant rag doll.

Solas turns to her. His face is calm. A kind of ethereal stillness settles over him, and he smiles.

Ar lath ma, vhenan. The sound of his voice comes from inside her own mind. Wake up.

And then a giant lobstrosity with the head of a praying mantis runs a red-lyrium-tinged claw through his back. Blood, much darker than it should be, sprays from his mouth. She feels the moment of death in her own bones. His body goes limp, like a puppet whose strings were cut. The horror pulls the claw out, letting what remains of Solas crumple to the floor, shakes the gore off with absurd daintiness, like it finds the mess unsanitary, and scuttles in Dorian and Margo's direction.

"No!" Margo chokes out, her throat raw.

And then, with no fuss at all, the world shifts and reassembles.

They are still seated at the table, exactly as they were. Margo looks at Dorian — he has grown pale, his grey eyes haunted. Before Margo can assess the others' reaction, her attention is drawn to Alexius. The Magister's fists tighten, and he turns his head slowly to behold his former student.

"It would appear that I have invited a snake into my house," he states with utterly terrifying calm. Considering that Alexius himself sports his most reptilian expression to date, the accusation would be ironic — if it weren't for the crackle of energy gathering around the older mage. "You would throw in your talents with this Inquisition ?" He spits out the last word as if it is a profanity.

Margo can feel magic gathering around Dorian. Bull shifts into a fighting stance, the movement slight but unmistakable. A draft of cold, dusty air carries a whiff of ozone, from which Margo concludes that Solas is ready for an escalation as well. But she dares not take her eyes off the magister.

"Gereon, what have you done?" Dorian chokes out. "Can you not see that this is madness? You... you have lost your way, old friend."

"Do not presume to school me in morality, boy!" Alexius bellows, spittle flying from dry lips. His eyes are utterly murderous — and completely void of reason. "Where were you when I tried to reverse Felix's condition? He was... is your friend! He thinks of you as the brother he never had!" He shoots to his feet and leans forward, fists pressed into the table, looming over Dorian like an unhinged, malevolent scarecrow. "Were you helping me find the solution to the slow horror that consumes him? No. You were not. You were too busy whoring and drinking. And now..." Alexius spreads his hands, apparently to encompass the general state of affairs. "Now this."

Margo isn't sure whether the four of them can take on the magister. They might. But then there is a whole contingent of Tevinter mercenaries presumably hanging around the castle somewhere.

"Gereon, listen to yourself." Dorian's tone is dry, but composed. "You know as well as I that we have tried everything. Because, as you will recall — if you only cared to see past your own helpless fury — I was there alongside you the entire time."

"Not everything," Alexius grinds out. "And you were not there when it would have mattered." And then the magister turns to Margo. "But it would seem you have brought me a present, Dorian. The model you helped me construct was faulty, and I could only get glimpses, but it would appear that your little bird has some natural immunity to the Blight, does it not?" He smiles unpleasantly.

Oh shit.

Before Dorian has a chance to retort — and before the conflict can escalate into an outright brawl — a sudden movement in the doorway draws Margo's attention.

"Father? What is the meaning of... Dorian?"

All heads turn in the direction of the voice. In Margo's estimation, the young man standing at the entrance to the hall is in his mid to late twenties. Like Dorian, he is naturally olive-skinned, but with a sickly pallor beneath the tan. It's nowhere near the necrotic awfulness that she saw in the crapsack future model, however. He looks very little like his father, which makes Margo conclude that the young man takes after the matriline.

"Felix," Alexius says quietly, and some of the anger drains out of him, replaced with such bone-deep heartbreak that Margo can't help but almost feel for the magister. So this is the boy Alexius has traded his humanity — and the innumerable lives of others — to save. With a horrible little jolt, Margo suddenly considers the profound selfishness of parenthood. Love, it would seem, makes monsters of us all.

"Felix, it is good to see you." Dorian gets to his feet, and, before the magister can do anything about it, he walks over and throws his arms around the younger man. Felix returns the embrace heartily, with much grinning and slapping of backs on both sides. "I had wanted to pay your father a visit before I set off to travel the south."

"Will you be staying for a short while?" Felix asks, and while his tone is warm, Margo notices that there is something about the young man's expression that telegraphs a warning.

"Alas, no. I fear we have overtaxed your father's hospitality as it is." Dorian takes a step back.

"Nonsense, Dorian." Alexius, now once again in full control of his presentation of self, gestures invitingly. Clearly, the Magister is unwilling to kill them all in front of his son — and Dorian is not about to attack his former mentor with Felix present, either. So, as long as Felix is in attendance, they are at a stalemate. Alexius's heavy gaze falls on Dorian. "It is late. Certainly, you would not wish to travel at night. The roads are unsafe. Stay for the evening. You can set off in the morrow."

Margo swallows. What are the chances that they will still be alive "in the morrow"?

"You will have no objections to us leaving early?" Dorian asks, his voice carefully calibrated to sound as if he is simply being considerate in not wanting to wake up his gracious host.

"Of course. The three of you can leave. But I think I would like to borrow your little bird. Surely, you can find yourself another."

Margo freezes in mindless fear. She catches Bull's gaze on her, and he makes a tiny little gesture with his head. She isn't sure what it means. It might be, "Not gonna happen on my watch ." Or it might be, "Sorry, Blondie, sounds like a good plan to me ."

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by Alexius's drinking habit.

Next up: Consequences


	43. Chapter 43: Acceptable Losses

_In which Margo reflects on the politics of disposability_ _._

 _As always, thank you for following Margo on her misadventures! Since we're still pretty close to Halloween, enjoy the horror sub-arc. This will get much worse before it gets better - but it will get better._

* * *

Felix volunteers to escort them to the guest chambers. When Margo gets up to follow Dorian and the others, she feels like a puppet on strings. It doesn't help that Alexius's reptilian gaze follows her every movement with cold, carnivorous interest.

A half-dozen cutthroats materialize seemingly out of nowhere, and after a quiet exchange with the magister they surround their small group. Felix, studiously pretending not to notice this, sticks to Dorian like a barnacle. Bull walks behind the two men, letting the useless bodyguard persona slip a little now that their cover has been blown. There isn't a chance to debrief him or Solas. Margo falls in step next to the elf, trying to ignore the hostile feelings emanating from the accompanying mercenaries at her back. Solas casts her a brief, questioning look. Margo averts her eyes quickly. Whenever she blinks, she sees his last moments before death, Solas's voice echoing in her head — soft, with just a tiny edge of irony. By this point, Maile's rather basic Elvhen vocabulary has churned around a few times — it's like waiting for the world's slowest processor to complete some simple task — and conjured a translation. She almost stumbles when the meaning floats into her consciousness.

So, all in all, what Margo really wants to do is curl up in a corner, stuff her head under a pillow, and maybe cry for a week. Or sleep.

Thoughts of sleep conjure Imshael, thoughts of Imshael conjure the last time she spoke with the cosmic asshole — and, by association, conjure his accursed and eerily accurate prophesying. It was a model , Margo reminds herself, for what feels like the hundredth time.

And then there is the other problem. In the grand scheme of things, she is disposable. Of course, she has known this from the start. What's one more pawn? Take her out of the game, and nothing much will change. Just more meat for the cosmic grinder. Bull would be mad not to accept Alexius's deal — one life for three isn't particularly difficult math.

Their small company stops in front of a heavy oak door. Felix pushes it open to reveal a surprisingly cozy room, lit by wall sconces and multiple large candles. The furniture is simple but comfortable, and the space looks neat, with some old but still colorful rugs to lend a splash of warmth to the gray masonry and several well-stocked bookshelves.

"I've kept it tidy," Felix says, looking just a tad embarrassed. "I did not think you would be back, but I tend to over-prepare, as you know." The young man looks at the rest of them. "Your friends can have the adjoining servants' room. It isn't much, but it is kept warm."

Dorian's hand lands on Felix's shoulder. "Thank you, my friend. Will you have time to talk?"

Felix shakes his head. "Not tonight. I am due for another curative regimen. Not that they do much good other than give me terrible joint pain." He sighs at that. Margo spots another door — a somewhat unobtrusive one — in the side wall. Bull follows Dorian into the room, and immediately sets towards what Margo assumes to be the entrance to the servants' annex — probably to check out how defensible their quarters are. After a brief hesitation, Solas proceeds inside as well.

Margo is about to follow when a hand clasps her shoulder. She startles and looks around to see who it might belong to. It's the sleazy ruffian from the tavern — the one who fetched Alexius when her bardic activities took a turn for the ideologically problematic.

"Not you, doll. You're coming with us."

Margo looks at her friends. Dorian frowns and turns to Felix. "Felix, I do not recall agreeing to your father's bargain."

The young man's expression grows bereft. "I am sorry, my friend. I will make every effort to ensure the soldiers do not touch her, but that is all I can do. I cannot protect all of you." He looks at Margo. "I am so very sorry."

"It's all right." That's Bull, and Margo meets his gaze, trying to slow down her racing heart by breathing through the terror. So. Just like that. Logically — logistically, tactically — it makes sense. She cannot fault him for this. It doesn't change the feeling of something snapping — and plummeting — inside of her. "Nothing personal." The Qunari watches her with an odd expression, as if he is trying to gauge her reaction. Whatever he sees there leads him to nod briefly. "But I think Blondie gets it."

"Do you truly find such a solution tenable, Iron Bull?" Solas's tone is not very far away from a hiss.

"Someone has to make the hard decisions," the Qunari shrugs.

Dorian looks like he is about to protest, but then the merc, whose fingers tighten around Margo's upper arm in a painful vise, cuts him off. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the fellow is in charge of the cutthroat contingent.

"Enough chit-chat. Our orders are clear. Come along, doll. The less of a fuss you make, the better it'll go for you." He pushes her down the corridor.

For something like thirty seconds, Margo expects a skirmish. She waits for the telltale crackle of Solas's magic. For the sucking horror of Dorian's building necromancy spells. She waits for Bull's bellow, full of gleeful, primordial battle rage. None of this happens. Nothing but the echo of footsteps down the worn stones, the dusty, stale air, and the Vint's painfully tight grip on her arm.

They walk in silence for a while, slowly winding down and down to what Margo knows from the modeling spell to be the dungeon. But her escort of disreputable asshats doesn't take her all the way to the cells. Instead, she's corralled into a small side room on what feels like the "garden floor" — halfway below ground level if the small window beneath the ceiling is any indication. At least it's not covered with a pane of glass — or mica, or whatever other mineral they use to make windows around here — so the room is comparatively well ventilated. Margo files that away as a win.

She's pushed through the door. The head merc dismisses the rest of the cutthroats with some curt command in what she assumes to be Tevene — lots of fricatives and sibilants. Margo observes him as he watches their retreating backs with cold, lifeless eyes. And then the merc turns to her.

"So." He smiles. He has blindingly white teeth, a hooked nose, and brown eyes, almost so dark the pupil disappears against the iris. His skin is a tad paler than his compatriots', with an oily sheen to it. "Tossed out like refuse, hmm? Some friends you have, doll."

Margo swallows back the terror and forces herself to meet the creep's gaze. She knows the type. She's not about to make his day and show fear — if he's going to get his jollies anyway, no sense in making it more enjoyable for him.

"It doesn't have to end badly for you, you know? The magister — he's gone soft in the head, if you ask me." Margo tries to place his accent. It's a combination of British and maybe German? He gives her an assessing once over, and leers. "But maybe you and I can help each other out, hmm?"

Margo clenches her fists. A line from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago floats into her consciousness. Don't trust, don't fear, don't beg. Not that this is a Stalinist camp, but same rules apply. Right.

"Be more specific," she says simply, though she's pretty sure where this is going to go.

He grins, and starts unbuckling his belt. Margo forces her expression into a derisive mask, hoping the fear doesn't show through it. "Putting the cart before the horse, aren't you, chief?" she drawls. "Buy a girl dinner first."

He scowls and Margo bites back a spiteful smirk. Doesn't do it for you when they don't cower, does it?

The Vint leaves his belt alone, crosses his arms over his chest, and assesses Margo with a cold expression. "I could also make your life much more unpleasant."

Margo forces her lips into a grin. Judging by the Vint's slightly widening eyes, it must look all sorts of unaccommodating. "You could. But I guarantee you that it would be more enjoyable for all interested parties if I cooperated willingly." She narrows her eyes. This is going to be the bluff of the century, but what did Amund say? Right. Let's gamble. "Besides, I don't think you're just after a quick tryst in a dank cell. Otherwise, I suspect we wouldn't be having this lovely chat."

That apparently strikes the goon as hilarious. He laughs soundlessly, although the mirth never reaches his flat gaze.

"Not half-bad looking, and passably clever. That's a dangerous combination, doll." He shuts the door with the tip of his boot, takes a few steps towards the only chair — careful not to turn his back to Margo at any point — and takes a seat. "So. Alexius's protege has joined the Inquisition and dragged you along into this mess. Not surprising, if you ask me — then again, no one did, so who am I to comment? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, sweetness, but it sounds like your organization isn't particularly good at looking out for their own."

He lets the statement hang in the silence, but Margo doesn't bite. She can wait out an uncomfortable silence. Generic Goon has nothing on some of her former students. Now that was pulling teeth.

"Nothing? No reaction? So, I take it you're not just a pretty broad with a few tunes. Bard-trained? Orlesian?"

Margo still doesn't respond, and simply stares at the bastard, quietly speculating what might be used as a blunt force instrument. Brother Genitivi's magnum opus would come in handy right about now.

"Keep mum, then." He leans forward. "Alexius wants to keep you for his own reasons. Trust me, whatever he has planned for you will not be to your liking. But see, this is where I come in."

Margo crosses her arms over her chest. If Generic Goon thinks she's going to help him with his one-sided conversation, he's got another thing coming.

He seems to guess that this is her approach, because he drops the ingratiating-but-threatening act — Margo supposes that being both the good and the bad cop at once is a rather thankless task — and gets down to business. "Here's my offer. I can put in a good word with the magister, make sure nothing too bad happens to you. And because I'm a generous soul, I'm even going to give you a choice in how you repay me. You could give me intel on the Herald and your little motley crew of southern fanatics, or whatever you are over there in your village. Or you could show your gratitude some other way." The leer leaves very little doubt as to what he means. "And, who knows, if you put in a good effort, over time I might even have you legally acknowledged as mine. "

"As a slave," Margo states dryly.

"I'm nothing like Alexius, doll. I treat my property well."

Margo watches him carefully. She's not about to feed him intel, so that leaves the other option. It could buy her time. There is that.

"Let me think on this overnight," she says. Generic Goon's dark eyes search her face, but she keeps on a studiously neutral mask, mixing in just a little bit of speculation to make it believable that she is tempted by the offer. Her best chances are to delay.

"If you think your friends are coming to your aid, I'd recommend you reconsider. I'd hate to see you disappointed. What's your name, little bard?"

She hesitates. "Maile," Margo says finally.

Generic Goon cocks his head. "Isn't that 'flower' in your gibberish?"

Margo just shrugs. What's in a name? Although if she had ever doubted that the multiverse has a particularly malevolent sense of humor, the fact that both of her incarnations have a botanically-related name should put that to rest. Generic Goon stands up then and takes a few steps forward, planting himself too close and crowding her. Margo balls her fists, but stands her ground. Right. Don't trust, don't fear, don't beg .

"And I'm Cassius. So. Do we have a deal, then?"

Margo forces herself to meet his gaze. "Let me think on it."

For a second, she's fairly sure he's not going to wait on the decision, but to her surprise, he laughs another one of his soundless cackles, and proceeds towards the door. "Don't wait too long. When your friends leave you behind tomorrow and you're all out of options, I might not be in such a generous mood."

He closes the door behind him, and Margo hears the lock snap into place.

She spends the rest of the night examining her cell for an escape route. The window, although glassless, is crisscrossed with narrow metal bars barely wide enough to let through a hand — let alone a whole person. The floor is packed dirt. With enough time and the right tool she supposes she could dig a tunnel. The heavy wooden door is bolted from the outside — there is no lock to pick. Not even a door handle. It does have a little opening in the bottom, barred by a sheet of metal, but unless she develops the ability to shapeshift into a cat, Margo isn't getting out that way. She notes that the door opens outward — if she had something to detonate, she might be able to blow it off its hinges. Or burn it — though Margo isn't sure at all she wouldn't suffocate in the process.

Nothing else seems promising, but she still circles the room, carefully knocking on the masonry for a hollow sound — any self-respecting castle should be riddled with secret passages, servants' warrens, and escape routes. Apparently, this particular castle — or at least this particular room — is not self-respecting at all. All the walls sound bleakly homogenous.

The furniture will not win any awards either. There is one chair, one pile of rotting straw that might, with some squinting, be described as a pallet, and one metal basin in the corner with a crude plank set on top of it — apparently, what passes for the local facilities. Josie's Orlesian nobles would have a fit. Margo cackles at the thought but makes herself stop before it devolves into hysterics.

By the time the sky in her tiny window turns a pre-dawn grey, Margo is shivering with cold and sleep deprivation, but she forces herself to stay awake, pinching herself at regular intervals until her forearms are raw with the effort. On the one hand, the prospect of Imshael inspires exactly zero optimism. But if she is to be perfectly honest with herself — and at this point, self-deception seems like a uniquely unproductive exercise — she is still expecting a rescue. Bull, she gets. The Qunari has no reason to trust her. He is a military man. Acceptable losses, and all that. But surely, Solas and Dorian — who actually know her backstory — would at least make the effort. If only out of sheer intellectual curiosity, if not out of friendship or other sentiments.

When the locking mechanism rattles outside the door Margo jumps to her feet, adrenaline briefly quickening her reactions and clearing the jumbled thoughts from her head. Somehow, she has lost time. The window — if one can call it that — is letting in a narrow shaft of sunlight. Margo frowns at it. Judging by the tint of the light, she guesses it is mid-morning.

The door doesn't open. Instead, a narrow rectangle materializes at the bottom and Margo glimpses briefly the toe of a boot. A tray slides into her room through the slit, and then the opening is sealed again from the outside. She hears footsteps retreating.

She makes her way to the tray, trying to squash the sudden influx of hopeless terror. Dorian said they wanted to leave early. Is it done, then? Are they gone?

Margo examines the contents of the tray. One jug of water, one slice of stale black bread, and one bowl of unidentifiable mush. She walks over to the chair, and sits, tray on her lap. There is a crude wooden spoon. She shovels some of the mush into her mouth, but gives up quickly — she's pretty sure it's mashed root vegetable peel. Not the worst thing to eat, nutritionally speaking, but it tastes like mops. The bread isn't much better, but she forces herself to gnaw at it anyway, using the water to soften the otherwise rock-hard mass.

"Meal" finished, she returns the tray to the door but appropriates the spoon. Surely there might be a way to weaponize it. If she is going to be in here for the long haul, her keepers will probably confiscate it eventually — depending on how tightly the operation is run. As good a time as any to find out.

Once the shaft of light travels across the floor and disappears entirely, Margo forces herself to confront the obvious. At this stage, it is unlikely help is forthcoming — at least in the immediate future. The others are most likely gone. She bites down the helpless hurt — feeling offended or betrayed over it isn't going to get her anywhere productive. It sure as hell isn't going to improve her chances at survival.

She tries to shift her mindset to Bull's. From his perspective, she is a just a soldier, and soldiers are, by their very definition, fungible. Solas and Dorian might have protested, but, in the end, there is little they can do while weaponless, vastly outnumbered by enemy forces, and offered the opportunity to walk out scott-free. She kicks the idea that they might have not even tried — that Solas might not have tried too hard, in the end — under the rug. And then imagines herself jumping on the long-suffering surface. There. Down with all her other monsters. Have fun in there. She decides that at least she can have the rug be Persian. Why not? It ties the room together.

She returns to her thoughts on Bull and steels herself against her brain's implacable penchant for analysis: no matter what else is happening, that thing will just churn out models like they're going out of fashion. Thus, no one likes prisoners of war, because prisoners of war are apt to squeal. Does she have information that would seriously compromise the Inquisition? She swallows. Yes. Yes, she does. Depending on how much Alexius saw of the crapsack future — since he wasn't present in the same way that she and Dorian were, it is entirely possible that he didn ' t see the same things. Then Evie's status might be relevant information indeed. Capture her and make her Tranquil, and he has Evie's rift-closing capacity at his disposal.

And this brings Margo right around to the main point. If she were in Bull's shoes, she would try to kill her. Poison, maybe. She eyes the tray. It is doubtful that he would have the time — or the means — but if Bull is in the Qun's version of the KGB, then it isn't outside of the realm of possibility.

The following hours are occupied in much the same way. Margo fluctuates between hope for a rescue — maybe they'll send Sera, or Harding — and the increasing certainty that she's wasting emotional and intellectual energy when she could be devising a plan for escape. She's got a spoon. Might as well start digging, right?

That line of thought begs the question of what she might do next. Go back to the Inquisition? And return as a POW? Knowing Torquemada, that will get her court martialed, tortured, and executed faster than you can say "colluding with Tevinter."

Avvar village. Oral history of the Avvar. She'll be the new Brother Genitivi. Is he still alive? If he is, maybe she can write to him. Propose a collaborative project. They could apply for a grant together. She would never have to see the Inquisition again. Not Leliana, not Bull, not Dorian. Not Solas.

She'll miss Varric. And Blackwall. And Sera — she'll miss the crazy elf. She'll have to see if Amund might be willing to lend her a hand. If she manages to escape, best leave the area — the Hinterlands are crawling with Torquemada's agents. She will need an atlas or a map. Her geography of Thedas is still tenuous at best.

But then there is Evie. The carnivorous, soulless bastards will eat her up and not even notice.

Sometime in the late afternoon, the door opens to let in Generic Goon. Margo looks up, quickly hiding inside her straw mat the spoon that she has been slowly sharpening against the stones. She half expects the Vint to demand "gratitude" — and so is glad to have the spoon within easy reach — but he is businesslike and formal.

"I am to accompany you to see Magister Alexius," he states and holds the door open for her to exit.

Margo gets to her feet and follows the merc into the hallway.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by overwrought speculations about "What would The Iron Bull do?"_

 _Next up: Alexius, other visitors, and more general unpleasantness._


	44. Chapter 44: Faustian Bargains

_In which Margo makes a bad situation worse._

 ** _Trigger warning: reference to miscarriage_**

* * *

Margo is led to a room that looks like a mixture between an academic's office and a mad scientist's laboratory. The place is almost cozy in its familiarity. There are mugs with half-finished tea crowding every available surface. As well as empty bottles of wine — some repurposed as candleholders. Papers and books are littered everywhere. She recognizes alchemy paraphernalia — very high-grade and expensive, if the excess of silver, gold, and copper is any indication — and other stuff that her mind classifies unhelpfully as "unidentified ritual objects."

Alexius is seated at a wide wooden desk. When he looks up, Margo frowns. His expression is incongruous. He looks affable. Friendly, even. The demented glint from the previous night is entirely absent, replaced by a kind of focused purposefulness. Margo represses a shudder. Without the overlay of madness, what makes this man so horrid is that he is so utterly familiar. In a different incarnation, he could have been on her dissertation committee. Just another scholar, distracted, messy, passionate about his work, driven by an insatiable curiosity. In another incarnation, this could have been a man she might have been on cordial terms with — debated theory, excoriated rival schools of thought. Asked for comments on a piece of writing before putting it through publication. (Until, that is, it turns out that he shirks all the admin work and harrasses young female faculty.)

"Come in, come in!" Alexius gets up, and gestures to a chair right on the other side of his desk. Margo walks over and sits. "Please. Accept my sincere apologies for all the unpleasantness." He closes a leather-bound journal and sets the quill back into its inkpot. "Your associates have left. I hope you are not feeling too cross about the charade of keeping you in such pitiful conditions. Now that they are out of the way, perhaps we could arrange for your accommodations to be more civilized."

Margo stills. What in the Void is the evil bastard playing at?

"You look surprised. Let me explain." Alexius picks up a bottle of wine and arranges two goblets in front of him. Margo is entirely uncertain about their cleanliness, but this doesn't seem to deter the magister. He pours the wine into both and sets one of the glasses in front of her. "Please, do join me. Alas, I find I have grown dependent on the numbing properties of this beverage. Does your world have an equivalent?"

Oh, dear merciful unspecified deity. Shit.

"Ah, yes. You wonder how I realized that you are from, shall we say, elsewhere? It is very simple. The model. The reason I did not follow you — and my wayward pupil — fully into the simulation is that I realized something was causing terrible interference. It was so stark, in fact, that I chose to remain largely on the outside, attending to the model's more... logistical aspects. You are not a mage, so I shan't bore you with the specifics. However, imagine my surprise when I realized the cause of the inference was you. A crude little elven minstrel." Alexius smiles and twirls his wineglass. He doesn't drink. "Appearances can be so deceptive, don't you find? In any event, from there, I simply siphoned a portion of the amulet's power to have a peek at your memories. A primitive trick when one is used to manipulating time itself. And yet, the short glimpses I saw were so profoundly unfamiliar that they forced me to entertain the only logical — if farfetched — conclusion." He pauses. Margo's heart thuds painfully in her chest. "You are from our very distant future, are you not?"

Margo forces herself to pick up the goblet, but doesn't drink, settling into twirling the glass in her fingers in imitation of her host. All things considered, Alexius's theory is not all that ridiculous, and she is not about to disabuse him of the notion.

The magister is clearly waiting for a response. Margo decides it would likely not be wise to try to wait him out.

"If you wouldn't mind, may I clarify something?" she allows herself to slip into her habitual academic register. If nothing else, the dissonance between the language, her appearance, and Alexius's expectations should throw him off-kilter a little. Might as well mess with his prejudices. "You realized I was something other than what you had expected, but you kept this realization from the others. Why? From what I have learned of your situation, I am assuming that you are primarily interested in me due to my resistance to the... Blight?"

Alexius's smile is unsettling with its genuine warmth. He takes a tiny sip of wine. There is very little left of the unhinged mage of the night before. This man is completely in control of himself. "Yes and no. Your fleshy avatar — if you allow me such a crass turn of phrase — seems naturally immune, from what I glimpsed from our modeling. A rare and valuable quality, but not exceptional. I will ask you to... help me with my son, since I believe you, of all people, would understand my plight. But this is only part of it. It is your capacity to control the Fade that I am interested in. Such talent has not been observed in generations, you know." His eyes sparkle with curiosity... bordering on greed. "When did it come back? It is what allowed you to travel here, is it not?"

At Margo's blank expression, Alexius chuckles again. "Do you truly believe that I would think it was Dorian who broke the spell?" He shakes his head. "Oh my dear child, Dorian is a magical prodigy in many respects, but manipulating the Fade has never been one of his strengths. Of course it was you. I felt you rend the entire complex structure apart as if it were nothing more than a measly spider web." He leans in. "And yet, you appear untrained. All emotion, no control. Have the techniques changed so much? And you are not even a mage. Were you sent by another? Or is Fadewalking so widespread in the future that it no longer correlates with magical training? That, my dear, would be something to behold. But I am getting ahead of myself. Imagine what you could become with proper instruction. Do you realize how absolutely rare your kind of somniari are for us? With your help, I could unlock the true potential of this amulet. I could remake the past." He takes a shuddering breath. "I could save my son." Alexius's tone shifts towards the confidential. "You have seen what this world is made to be with the advent of the Elder One. Is this why you have come? To prevent it? Of course it is. I too believe there may be a middle way. With you at my side, we could find it. We could stop this madness, this senseless war, this meaningless conflict that has fractured Thedas. We could restore peace." He fixes his eyes on her, their color amber in the candlelight. "And, who knows, perhaps we could find a way for you to return home?"

Margo tries to hold her face still. It doesn't take much speculation to know what she would become under this man's tutelage. It is simple. Her mind, helpful as ever, provides a concise model. It would start slowly. With Felix. She would become attached — it is easy to like the young man. But more importantly, this is a deep tendency that is core to what she is. To care for the weeds — the forgotten, the doomed, the unneeded. She can no more transcend this than she can become other than what she is, in this world or the next. And little by little, with Felix her responsibility, her priorities would align with the magister's. Little by little, she would see him as less monstrous. Little by little, she would inch her way down the slippery slope.

Nor has she forgotten Alexius's cold reptilian eyes from the night before. This is a mask. A clever, convincing mask. But a mask nonetheless.

"Let me consider it," she finally says. She needs time. Time to run from this. To find a way out. Though it's unlikely the magister will let her off the hook quite so easily without something in return. "In the meantime, might I be useful to you to help stabilize Felix? He strikes me as an exceptional young man. I would be glad to help." As far as Margo is concerned, this is her only strong card. She might as well play it.

Alexius's eyes narrow. "What is there to consider? You believe your Inquisition would give you so much as a passing thought? Trust me, they will not. They do not know what you are, do they?" He clasps his hands in front of him. "You are an intelligent woman. I had garnered as much during our encounter in the tavern. That song of yours... Very clever work. You must tell me some time what its original context is. But your friends..." he smirks, "such as they are... were only too eager to take me up on my offer. Do you think that any of them raised a single objection? The Qunari, I dare say, was as happy as a freshly anointed magister. Dorian might have had some gripes, but if he did, he kept them prudently to himself. And your elven friend was as impassive as one of those insipid statues that seem to be so in vogue in Minrathous."

Margo makes a herculean effort not to flinch. Instead, she slowly brings her wine to her lips and forces herself to take a tiny sip. Even if it's poisoned, the chances that the dose is critical would be low.

"They are military men. It is understandable," she finally says, and she gives herself a mental pat on the back for sounding so damn reasonable. She doesn't feel reasonable. "Let me think, magister."

"Gereon," the mage corrects. "I suspect you and I will be on first-name basis in no time. You will soon realize that I am the soundest option." He pauses. "But you are right. I would ask for your assistance with my son's treatment, and I am grateful that you offer it freely."

Margo nods. "What do you need of me?"

As it turns out, what he needs from her is blood. And a whole lot of it. Maybe Felix's therapy involves transfusions.

Woozy from blood loss, and barely fazed by the fact that blood donations are done through magical means — and involve large airborne spheres of the red stuff slowly floating up from her punctured veins and into copper receptacles — Margo is led to her cell by Generic Goon. He cops a feel on his way, but she is too weak to do anything about it. As soon as she is in her cell, she collapses on her pallet. Vaguely, as if through a fog, she registers that, despite Alexius's promise, her accommodations have not been changed. Which leads her to conclude that his suddenly found politeness is contingent on her dancing to the tune of the pied piper. No surprise there.

Cassius doesn't linger, thank unspecified deity, and Margo decides that he's under specific orders on that particular topic. Once the door is closed, she struggles against exhaustion. The rectangle of her window has turned a dark blue. She can see a few stars.

Margo tries to fight sleep, but, in the end, sleep prevails.

"Hello, da'elgar. Have you missed me?"

No surprises there, either. They are in Solas's hut in Haven. The setting is so familiar — down to the ridiculous portrait of the evil abbot on the wall — that Margo feels her throat constrict with sudden, unshed tears.

"What do you want?" she says, not even bothering to turn in the direction of the voice. She focuses on the evil abbot instead. At least it's humorous.

The cosmic asshole, not willing to let this disregard for his illustrious presence slide, glides to her side. Margo dignifies the creature with a perfunctory glance. Apparently, it decided to mix things up a bit. It is embodying Solas from the crapsack future, complete with the red lyrium glow. Its movements and expressions are a perfect replica.

"You don't pull punches, do you?" It is probably a bad idea to engage the thing in conversation, but Margo feels unmoored, adrift in a sea of rising nihilism. Why not engage? At least, it seems to speak the truth, on occasion.

"Is this form displeasing you? From what I can gather it is the closest to your heart at the moment — and since you stated in no uncertain terms that your daughter is off-limits..." It shrugs and smiles warmly. "One must accommodate."

"It's fine." Margo turns away to survey some irrelevant nicknack on the shelf. "What do you want?"

"A mutually beneficial trade, of course." Red lyrium Solas — complete with his anguished, tender gaze — takes a few paces to stand in front of her.

Margo looks briefly, then averts her eyes, fighting the burn of tears. There. Some random basket in the corner. That'll do. "What an unexpected turn of events," she states dryly.

"If you wish to survive your predicament with your morals intact, you must escape." The tone is such a perfect replica of Solas's that Margo has to squeeze her eyes shut against the sudden wave of heartbreak. This feeling, whatever it is, does not serve her. Under the rug with it.

"And this is where you tell me that you're here to help me do just that." She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. "What do you want in exchange?"

Some vague part of her mind feebly tries to press the panic button. She is bargaining with Imshael. On the other hand, isn't the entire nature of the dynamic such that, no matter what her choices are, he still manages to feed? Why not dictate the terms on which he does it, then?

"A trifle."

Margo barks a laugh. "Right. I already have a bridge in this exact color, thank you."

The thing wearing Solas's face looks puzzled for a moment, then chuckles.

"I see. You think me disingenuous, da'elgar, but I am not. I am, you might say, invested in your future."

Margo forces herself to look at the thing. If she watches it for long enough, she can see the cracks in its disguise. She cocks her head to the side. "Why? What's the long game, Imshael? Surely not possession?"

The "choice spirit" throws his head back and laughs, the sound rattling with the red lyrium in its fake lungs. "Oh, ma da'elgar, you are such an entertaining little thing. Even if I were, I would certainly not choose a body that is already occupied. Too... sloppy for my tastes. And besides, what is that delightful expression? 'That would be too vulgar a display of power,' yes?"

Great. They're down to this — cosmic asshole quoting The Exorcist at her. She's pretty sure he already cycled through The Silence of the Lambs , so what's next?

"Fine. What are you offering?" Even though they are in the Fade, her heartbeat accelerates. "To be clear, I am not agreeing to anything yet."

Non-Solas nods solemnly. "Of course. Such deals must be sealed formally. I am no vulgar trickster." He starts circling her. "You have met the Orlesian 'knight,' have you not? He is not so far. And, dare I say, should I convey a message, he would come marching to the rescue. Who knows, he might even succeed. Your other 'friends' will not come for you." She can hear the air-quotes in his tone. "And I fear that the magister's plans are not quite as... benevolent as he would have you believe. But you know this, of course."

"Why do you want me to escape?" It seems like a perfectly legitimate question.

Non-Solas's lips fold into a familiar rueful smile. "As I said, I am invested in your future. Believe me, poppet, I am your best alternative."

"Sure, sure, and I'm a crocodile," Margo confirms with a pleasant expression and a sage nod. Non-Solas frowns. "And in return? Let me guess." She brings her hand to her heart in a theatrical gesture, and mimics the thing's intonation. "A simple kiss."

The creature's frown deepens. Apparently, it does not like to be mocked. "No, not a kiss. I have the distinct feeling you are not in a particularly amorous mood. Perhaps at a later date. What I want is a tiny thing, as I said. Something for which you have no use. A... memory."

It is Margo's turn to frown.

"A specific one?"

"Indeed."

She narrows her eyes. "Which?"

The thing represses a smirk. "The one of you and the Tevinter mage whom your body's previous occupant bedded."

"Why in the Void would you want that ?" Then an idea hits her, and Margo makes a disgusted face. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

"Well?"

"Let me think." Stalling. Margo's new favorite tactic. With more time, she might be able to regain enough focus and strength to try to manipulate the Fade. Or to find an alchemical enhancer. Or get a message out to Solas — if she can. Not that there are any guarantees that he would try to get her out, of course. Margo forces herself to take another breath. Just a day ago the idea that the elf might not at least try to help her would have never crossed her mind. She can almost hear Baba's words. Ah, my soul, it is not the trickster's fault that the fool is trusting. She swallows. Right. Don't trust, don't fear, don't beg. The broader problem remains. She needs time to find her way out.

She looks at Imshael. "I need to think about it," she repeats. To her surprise, the creature nods in acquiescence.

"Think, then. I am certain I will see you shortly."

Margo wakes up on the rotting straw, her entire body shaking. Strangely enough, there are no other unpleasant symptoms.

It is only by the end of the fourth day of her imprisonment that Margo finally accepts the fact that there will be no rescue. On day two, she begins to dig a tunnel with her spoon. It's a great spoon. Sharp on one side — in case she gets a chance to stab someone — and spoon-like on the other. At this rate, however, the tunnelling will take her years. She uses the latrine to conceal the hole — the metal basin is wide enough and disgusting enough that she doubts anyone would want to poke around beneath the planks on which it rests. If anyone asks, she'll say that she's doing everyone a favor by digging a sewage pipe.

Margo packs the excavated earth around the perimeter of the room. It's a temporary solution at best. She will have to spread the earth around the floor eventually.

At the end of the second day, Generic Goon pays her a visit and demands payment. Margo laughs in his face, insinuates that it might end in "dismemberment" for him — and then threatens to rat him out to Alexius. He promises to make her life miserable, but leaves his pants on.

Once a day, she is taken into Alexius's study. At first, he just takes more blood — much less than the first time, but enough to keep her weak. On the third day, with a long and apologetic diatribe — and increasingly more insistent demands that she make the decision to formally ally herself with him and let him "direct her talents" (whatever that entails) — he asks whether he could extract bone marrow. Margo blanches. It's a horrible procedure in her own world, so what in the Void is it going to be in Thedas? Even if it is magical in nature — like the blood harvesting — there is no way this will go over well.

She agrees.

It is every bit as awful as she expects, but she passes out from the pain early on. On the upside, they leave her well enough alone on day four. (She scratches marks into the floor by her bed with her most excellent spoon). Margo spends her "day off" on the straw pallet, fluctuating between species of non-sleep and non-wakefulness. Much of the fluctuating involves incoherent but gruesome visions of the crapsack future.

She gets a new visitor: an elven mage by the name of Flora or Fiona or Fauna — she can't quite recall which — who tends to her but says little. By evening, Margo is well enough to get up on her own and eat her meal. It's marginally better than usual — and includes an overcooked slab of meat. Better overcooked than undercooked, Margo decides. It probably used to be a rat.

She makes the decision while masticating the remains of the rodent mignon.

"Hello, da'elgar. You called?"

Margo sits down on a chair in Solas's hut and motions for Imshael to take the opposite seat. She is too weak to weave her surroundings — it is whatever her mind defaults to.

"I have decided," she says.

The creature looks shocked at this — and then, slowly, a delighted smile creases its features.

"I have a condition," Margo adds quickly. "After this deal is struck, you leave me alone unless expressly invited."

It frowns. "Out of the question, poppet. This is not how this works."

Margo shakes her head. "I know you feed on me. And I know the choices you offer are always crap. I have no doubt that, should I accept your offer now, it will benefit you more than it will benefit me. But my guess is that it will give you enough... nutrients to last some time. I want a guarantee that you will leave me alone for long enough to get things sorted and not get myself killed. This benefits us both, so don't get greedy." She smiles unpleasantly. "Quid pro quo, Clarice."

"And wait until you develop a new way to keep me out?" It chuckles. "I do not think so."

Margo fixes the thing with a stare that she hopes telegraphs calm. And in fact, she doesn't feel the panic she was expecting. Just a kind of bone-deep resignation. "I suppose it's a risk you're just going to have to take, isn't it? But you're a clever spirit. I'm sure you'll develop new tactics."

They watch each other for a few moments with what is probably matching assessing expressions.

"You are full of surprises, da'elgar."

Margo ignores the praise, or the expression of grudging admiration — she isn't sure whether it is familiar or not and decides the thought doesn't serve her regardless.

"You know that time is meaningless for one such as I," it finally offers.

"Your problem," Margo says. "I want a month. After that, you're free to come by and resume your whole 'I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down' routine."

For a second, the thing looks confused. "It is not a reference I am familiar with," it finally offers.

"Your problem," Margo repeats. "Do we have a deal?"

It pauses for a long time. And then it smiles — and there is nothing of Solas in the feral rictus. "The deal is struck," it says, and there is a strange echo to the utterance, something that she feels deep down in her very essence — whatever the hell that is, these days.

Non-Solas rises, and something beneath or behind the mask rises with him, though its contours are unfathomable to Margo's cognitive apparatus. It steps towards her. She forces herself not to cringe away. But the motion it makes is deceptively innocuous. It passes the perfect facsimile of Solas's long, delicate fingers over Margo's lap, as if plucking a flower. And in the next instant, it is gone.

Margo wakes up with a feeling of sticky warmth between her legs. The cramps are not all that much worse than what she remembers her teenage periods to have been like — the crippling pain went away after she had Lily. She's not entirely certain this is what she thinks it is, but, counting the weeks backwards, it certainly adds up. Occam's razor. She stumbles over to the basin, pulls down her pants, and sits down on the rough wooden plank. The pain comes in waves. She rocks back and forth gently, her hands clasped against her abdomen.

Her body is too dehydrated to produce tears. Margo stares blindly into the darkness, and sings quietly to herself.

Hushabye, don't you cry  
Go to sleep, my little baby  
When you wake, you shall have  
All the pretty little horses

* * *

 _This chapter is brought to you by a public service announcement: before making deals with demons, read the fine print._

Next up:Escape from Redcliffe


	45. Chapter 45: The Girl in the Tower

_In which Margo_ _receives help from an unlikely source, and comes across a new window of opportunity._

 **Content Warning** : reference to miscarriage in early part of chapter.

* * *

The bleeding doesn't stop, but eventually its quality changes. Less clumpy, more of a steady stream. Not good. Margo doesn't know exactly how much time she spends squatting over the filthy latrine, but at length she forces herself to a standing position, pulls up her trousers, and stumbles over to the door. Her head feels like it is stuffed full of cotton, and her eyes don't seem to be working properly, so she navigates by feel.

Once her fingers touch the wooden planks, Margo leans against them and tries to call for help. Her voice is faint, barely a croak. All she wants to do is to lay down and sleep. She forces herself to remain standing. The fabric of her trousers clings to her skin, sticky and unpleasantly tepid. She tries to pound on the boards, but lifting her fist takes too much effort, as if she is moving through water.

Think . The order is vague and far away. The part of her mind that is not preoccupied with critical failure tries to make the connection between the removal of a memory in the Fade and the physical consequences in the waking world. Is the relationship causal? On a better day, it would be an interesting analytical puzzle. This is certainly not that day. Even the idea that she is dying from blood loss feels distant now, like something strictly academic — with no direct bearing on her specifically. Besides, so far, it's not the worst kind of death. A quiet fading.

Margo allows herself to slide down into a sitting position, her shoulder braced against the door for support. Very slowly, with fingers that do not obey, she begins to untie the laces of her boot. She is not sure how long the task takes her. She loses time. Eventually, the boot slides off. She stares in the general direction of where it is in her hands with vague confusion. Why did she take off the footwear?

After a few long moments, she remembers. She flips the boot in her hands and uses the wooden heel to pound against the boards. It's not a particularly loud sound, but it's loud enough that she can hear it echo down the hallway.

Eons pass. She loses more time, floating in and out of consciousness. When Margo is conscious, she resumes the pounding, but each time it takes more work. Eventually, when she floats into focus again, she realizes she doesn't have the strength to lift her hand. She huddles over herself, the boot still in her lap. By this point, she is numb. At least the pain is gone. The edges of her vision fill with a faint, greenish glow — a sort of Fade tint that is both familiar and welcoming. She can hear quiet whispers, just at the edge of awareness. Shadows ripple in the darkness, like the faint contours of unfathomable sea creatures, glimpsed in the watery depths.

One of the shapes condenses with a soft phosphorescence, and Margo's eyes are drawn to it, as if to a beacon — the only thing of any substance and light in the inky, stuffy murk. She is surprised to realize the glow is humanoid. Maybe it's a mermaid? Do mermaids have legs? She can't quite remember which half is supposed to be a fish.

She squints, but her eyes no longer seem to work. She is looking out with some other sense, one she has no words for.

" Ah, my soul, what trouble has found you? " The voice is coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

The sob startles Margo into the sudden realization that she still has a physical body.

"Baba?" she whispers, trying to blink her eyes into focus. The vision doesn't dissipate. "Baba… Are you here to take me home?" Margo tries to smile. "I think I'm ready."

The glowing form, whose contours sharpen into a familiar, tall, kerchiefed, slightly stooped figure, chuckles wryly.

"Ay ay ay, little thistle, your old Baba raised you hardier than that. You're not the first to lose a seedling. Nor will you be the last." The figure floats over to Margo and crouches beside her. In the whirling, luminescent tendrils that constitute the presence, Margo glimpses Baba's strong nose, knowing smile, and slate-grey eyes, a cunning sparkle glinting in their depths.

Margo lets her eyelids droop closed. She can still see the apparition. "I'm so tired, Baba."

The old woman tsks. When she speaks, there is a steely implacability beneath the sing-song tone. "Dry your tears, heartling. The world is a spinner's plaything. You are of my roots, and our roots run deep. We are the ones that endure. New things grow where old things died. Everything returns. Besides, it isn't your time to leave the wheel. There is much work ahead."

Margo forces her eyes to open. She wants to argue, but she doesn't have the energy. And then, suddenly, she is flooded with a deep sense of embarrassment — which is sort of incongruous considering the circumstances. Incongruity aside, it snaps her back into focus. Baba's right. The least she can do is stop wallowing.

"I don't think anyone is coming," she finally manages. Her lips are cold and move with difficulty.

"No one is coming? Since when does old Baba not count?" The apparition chortles quietly. "The dandelion doesn't wait for the water to drop from the sky. It stretches its taproot to reach for it between the stones. The self-heal doesn't wait for the bee to alight on its pollen. It lures her with pretty petals and heady perfume. The burdock doesn't hope for the bird to eat its fruit to spread its seeds — it bites into the fur and lets the wolf carry it far from home, so it can grow elsewhere. If help isn't coming, little weed, then you'd better help yourself."

The luminescent shape briefly hovers closer, and Margo is wrapped in a tingly sort of warmth. She smells wormwood and juniper. Papery lips brush a kiss against her forehead.

And then Baba melts into air. The greenish tint at the edges of Margo's vision recedes.

She finds enough strength for another volley of taps against the door.

At length, her ears pick up footsteps.

* * *

It would be easier if she blacked out entirely, but she does not, and thus the next half hour is every bit as unpleasant and humiliating as one might imagine under the circumstances. Margo is discovered by no other than Generic Goon. After yanking her to her feet, clearly suspicious that this is some ruse, and realizing what state she is in, he swears a blue streak and lets her crumple back to the floor with another expletive and an expression of horrified disgust. He then retreats down the hallway, presumably to fetch more competent help.

Margo drifts. Later, her eyes open to behold the short elven brunette who had cared for her after the bone marrow harvesting, accompanied by Alexius in the flesh.

"She was with child?!" Alexius grinds out at the mage. The brunette doesn't even flinch. "Why was I not told?"

"Because, my lord, you would not let me examine her before subjecting her to the procedures." The mage's tone is weary.

Alexius seethes but apparently has no retort prepared. "If you suspected it, Fiona, then you should have broached the subject," he finally states. "Attend to her. And have some of your colleagues collect the tissues. They should be studied carefully, in case they hold a clue to the resistance against the Blight."

Margo watches the magister storm off down the hallway.

After that, things get vague. At some point, Margo is wrapped in a blanket and carried somewhere, but she drifts off. The next time she comes to, she is on a bed in a cramped, overheated room. Her clothes have been changed, and it seems that someone cleaned her off. The elven mage — Fiona — is forcing her to drink something that smells strongly of elfroot and faintly of some other herb that she can't quite identify. Margo gulps the liquid down and collapses back onto the cot. Two mages — Fiona, and another woman with dark skin, shorn hair, and yellowish eyes — take turns flooding her body with healing magic.

Margo tries to focus, to get a sense of her new surroundings, but her mind is heavy and dull. Keeping her eyes open requires too much effort, so she lets them drift closed and focuses on what she can hear instead. She remains very still, conserving energy.

"Je crois qu'elle s'est endormie," Fiona comments eventually.*

It takes Margo a few seconds to realize they are speaking a variant of French. She files the two women away under "Orlesian." Fortunately, her linguistic fluency has ported along with the rest of her skillset, and understanding the conversation only requires a quick mental switch.

There is a long pause. "We should count ourselves lucky she did not bleed to death. This will cost us, Grand Enchanter."

"I will not be blamed for this, Matilde." Fiona's voice is irritated. "We could not have known. If anyone is responsible, it is Alexius. We both warned him that an examination by a medic was in order."

"But we did not insist," Matilde sighs.

"It was not our duty to insist. Besides, there is the possibility that the girl took an abortifacient when it suited her."

"I find it much more probable that the procedures she has undergone have brought this on." Matilde's tone is dry. "Whatever the cause, it is difficult to say for certain before the quickening: I, for one, am not convinced there had been a pregnancy. Did you take note of the abdominal scar?"

Margo doesn't see the other mage's response, but she can hear the shrug in her tone. "We do not know what caused it."

Another resigned sigh from Matilde. "In either event, it is not our affair, Fiona. I doubt she will last much longer at the rate Alexius is using her. But we have our own to worry over. We have observed an improvement in Felix over the last three days, have we not? That is what is relevant. We must make sure she lives for as long as possible."

"Yes." A pause from Fiona. "Let us check on Marcus, before second crow. It shouldn't be long now, I fear."

Matilde sniffs. "How very timely that Magister Alexius will have a new subject for his experiments, then. Truly, what streak of remarkable luck for our lord and master."

"Hush, my friend. This is not the Game, and we are not in Orlais, but the walls still have ears."

At length, the two women begin to gather their things. Margo stays still, and keeps her breathing even.

"Make sure you lock the door, Matilde. She is in no shape to wander around, but better safe than sorry."

Oh, yeah? Watch me, Margo thinks acerbically.

When she hears the lock click shut, she forces herself into a sitting position. Her head spins from the low blood pressure. So. Neither healing magic nor the tonics seem to entirely remedy heavy blood loss. Good to know, for future reference. She looks at her new clothes. The tunic is simple, though the fabric is of decent quality — a thin wool of some sort. The pants are the sort of loose, homespun trousers the more heavily armored soldiers tend to wear under their armor. She has seen both Cassandra and Blackwall sport variants of these. All in all, some kind of standard-issue pajamas. At least they're not striped. Or bright orange. There's that. Under the trousers, she finds a basic set of underwear, but no telltale padding — which makes her conclude that the mages have not only stopped the bleeding but either alchemically or magically removed the rest of the shedding uterine lining while she was out of commission. She winces. Margo Duvalle, lab rat.

With a mental apology to last night's rodent steak for her inadvertent cannibalism, Margo swings her legs over the side of the bed, waits out another bout of dizziness, and surveys her surroundings. Her eyes alight on an alchemy table. Well, well, well. She makes herself stand up and walk over, still a little wobbly, but her strength is returning slowly. She won't be running a marathon in the immediate future, but little steps, and all that. There are some remnants of an elfroot potion in a glass beaker on a rudimentary burner and an array of clay jars containing powdered ingredients on the shelf. After some sniffing and poking around, Margo locates a mixture that appears to contain royal elfroot, if the purplish leaves and pungent, bitter aroma are anything to go by. Right. That will do. She downs the remains of the elfroot potion, locates a jug of clean water for brewing, and sets the new decoction on the fire.

Auntie's Compendium would come in handy right about now, but she left it, along with her armor and weapons, in Sera's care. Margo wonders briefly what became of their stuff — it never did make it to the team, likely because Alexius spirited them away too quickly.

At the thought of her former team, Margo crushes a pang of helpless hurt. She is waiting for the emotion to transmute into cold rage — or something else that doesn't feel quite so vulnerable — but it's taking its sweet time. Perhaps the process needs an accelerant.

Pragmatics, she reminds herself. Focus on pragmatics. Neither sulking nor seething is going to help her get out. She walks around the room to examine her new territory. The space is a makeshift infirmary qua alchemy lab, with an emphasis on makeshift. None of the fancy equipment she spied in Alexius's office is here — this stuff is maybe a grade below what Master Adan uses.

There is a window. She walks over it, trepidation making her heart pound faster. It isn't locked. She flings it open — there are no metal bars on the other side of the pane. Then she looks out. Oh.

The drop is not gargantuan — maybe forty feet — but she wouldn't survive a jump to the jagged rocks below, and the sheer surface of the castle's wall cannot be scaled without some serious rappelling equipment. Beneath, the lake laps at the stones with a quiet, rhythmic rumble. Margo watches the cerulean sky. It is close to dawn, and the giant moon hangs low and tawny over the horizon. So, this is the side where the sun sets, Margo decides — whichever side that is.

Once the potion has thickened into an aromatic, purplish tonic, Margo gulps it down as fast as she can, trying not to scald her tongue too much in the process. This variant of the plant is noticeably more potent. The pulling, aching looseness in her lower abdomen subsides. More importantly, her thoughts clear to a sharp focus, which makes her conclude that the potion contained some kind of upper.

From there, Margo assesses her new accommodation with a more critical eye while her mind cycles through several scenarios. She takes note of a large chest in the corner, and of the sconces low on the walls that provide her only source of illumination. The bed is covered in a blanket, with simple sheets underneath. After some rummaging around, Margo finds a set of small shears in a chest of drawers near the alchemy table. They are little more than children's scissors, with rounded blades, likely used for cutting bandages or clothes off a patient. Aside from that, the drawers contain towels, thread, and an eclectic assortment of clothes, probably appropriated for the good of the collective from the room's episodic occupants. The ones who didn't make it. There is nothing else sharp or dangerous. Her minstrel clothes and boots are nowhere in sight, likely removed for further examination and disposal. One of the sets of discarded clothing seems to belong to a female commoner — Margo guesses a servant. Perhaps one of the unfortunate souls Alexius used to power his blood magic. After a brief hesitation, Margo extracts them, steps out of her standard issue pajamas, and dons the skirt, blouse, and basic bodice. The clothes are loose and too long on her. She has to lace the bodice to its narrowest capacity: its previous occupant had been somewhat more generously endowed. Task finished, she appropriates a set of bandages to fashion footwraps.

From there, Margo works quickly. She pulls the bedsheets from the horsehair mattress and uses the shears to cut them into strips. After looping and tying the ends around the leg of the bed, she braids the fabric into a simple plait. Once she runs out of sheets, she uses the towels from the chest of drawers to add length to the rope — until she runs out of towels. After that, she uses the clothes.

By the time Margo is finished, her palms are slick with sweat from the constant, low-grade dread of being discovered. She grabs the pile of rope, walks out towards the window, and tosses it out. A divvy in the stone provides a toehold, and she props her elbows on the windowsill to take a peek at her handywork. Margo smiles grimly into the gloom. The rope doesn't reach all the way to the water, but it's not that far off — a plausible jump. Morning fog drifts off the lake, softening the outline of the shore below.

She moves to the chest next. It contains more folded blankets. She re-rolls them to create a space in the middle, with a mental thanks to the resident interior decorator for cost-saving on the furniture: the chest is cobbled together from rough, poorly fitted planks and looks well-ventilated. Margo spreads the blanket halfway across her little fort, then quickly walks around the room, extinguishing all the wall sconces. Once the room is dark, she climbs into her new hiding place and pulls the lid closed, careful not to jostle the blanket that conceals her. The little nook has the added merit of being warm and cozy — if a little stuffy and with a distinct smell of sheep. She spreads the blanket as best she can to create the illusion of a flat surface. And then Margo settles in to wait.

It's a long and uncomfortable wait. Her muscles ache from maintaining her folded position, and yet she almost nods off. She pinches herself to stay awake. Unwanted thoughts keep creeping in, and Margo distracts herself the best she can by recreating a mental map of the castle. The kitchens should be on the first floor, and she theorizes that they might have a servants' entrance, as well as some equivalent of a loading dock.

Margo is so absorbed by her topographic ruminations that she almost misses the click of the lock. And then there is a worried exclamation, quick footsteps running to where the window is, then back again, and, finally, a high-pitched scream. "Grand Enchanter! The prisoner is gone!"

Margo stills, barely daring to breathe. Finally, more footsteps come pounding on the stones.

"How is this possible?" That's Fiona, a combination of incredulous and peeved.

"You idiot!" Generic Goon spits out furiously. "You did not secure her?"

"She was barely conscious when we left her! She couldn't even walk!"

The sounds of rummaging, of furniture being pushed. "I smell Andraste's Ashes. No one told us she was an alchemist." That would be Matilde, and if Margo isn't mistaken there is an edge of spiteful amusement to the woman's tone. Margo decides that she sort of likes that one.

"She won't survive in that water for long. If you think the magister will let this mistake slide, mage, think again. I do not envy your fate."

"She couldn't have swum far. It may not be too late."

When the sounds of the retreating stampede fade, Margo counts to twenty and then pushes the lid open. If they left someone to guard the room, she is screwed.

She climbs out of the chest. The room is empty. Margo grabs a discarded rag from the alchemy table and fashions a kerchief that hides her hair, since the blond plait is one of her more distinctive features. Then she gathers several blankets into a large wad — large enough that she can conceal her face behind it while carrying it in her arms. The door gapes open invitingly. Margo takes a steadying breath.

Ta-ta, fuckers.

And with that, she walks out into the hallway.

* * *

*Translation: "I think she fell asleep"

 _This chapter was brought to you by the "girl in the tower" trope, and the "75-kg petty thief wants to escape from a third-story jail window" physics problem._

 _Next up: More escape shenanigans, and some familiar faces._

 **Update schedule: please note, RAGT will be updating 1/week on Fridays evening EST. I'll give a heads up if the schedule changes. Thank you for reading, and to those leaving reviews and comments, thank you so much. I appreciate them enormously, even when I can't always answer them right away!**


	46. Interlude: In the Meantime, Elsewhere

_This is a bonus chapter that happens in parallel with the events of the Redcliffe arc. It also has multiple POVs, and is the only time RAGtT ventures into other people's POVs to date. This plays with language a lot, and you might need the background it provides in order to understand the worldbuilding moving forward._

 _Enjoy! Next "real" update on Friday._

* * *

 ** _Cole, Therinfal Redoubt_**

The language of his fleshy shape is difficult. It flows, sequential, words that must follow other words, words with no room for overlap, that must have a thing on the other side of them, words that cannot be|with the world, only reflect it.

He still tries to make them for the Bright One ( _she shines darkly_ ), to make her understand, to help her defeat the impostor in her head.

Before - before there was a before and an after, so long before he doesn't remember what shape time took, and long before he too took shape - Envy had been Admiration. He tries to re|member this, but he can't, not really ( _he puts the severed members back into a shape, but they won't reknit, won't heal, won't come together_ ).

Admiration. Eyes so black and full they glittered with starlight, with dreams and hopes and wishes, and arms so many they held up the sky and cradled their love like the waves of the ocean.

Before, when you could still be|with, before time mattered, before matter ran out of time and was unmade, before both places sang discordant, before there were both places, before they all shuddered, and sundered - ( _a scattered sort of thing_ ) - before they became the many - ( _their name was legion_ ) - Admiration had been|with Compassion. It had been|with others too, tangled and woven, contours soft like fog over water, moving together-as-one in the being|with. Compassion had been|with Pride, and Love, and Wisdom, and Purpose, and Wonder, and all the others, and those had been|with each other and others, before they be|came the many (the ten thousand things). With Justice he|they were Mercy, with Purpose he|they were Care, with Sorrow he|they were Solace. Before, when they could still be|with other-than-flesh, before Justice began to flake and fray, before the ( _very last of_ ) Justice that he knew of be|came|with the mage to be|come Vengeance to keep shape, before all that, Mercy had been plentiful.

But that was before. They - ( _the many_ )- could no longer be|with. They could only be|come - fleshy and slow or fleshy and fleet, or unfleshed and mad on the other side of themselves - but always anchored, alone, asunder.

He could still suffer|with, but only fix by taking away, by making forget, by making less-than. Within the fleshy fake ( _a real boy_ ), he recalled his shape in the doing. So he still was|... barely.

He had been drawn to the pain. Pieces missing, phantom absences screaming, nothing left to subtract without adding more suffering.

He wanted to help. In the doing, he re|membered himself.

Admiration had be|come other-than. It didn't happen all at once - these had been slow excisions.

With|out Love to make room for others, it be|came Ambition.

With|out Wonder to broaden its horizons, it be|came Craving.

With|out Wisdom to teach it discernment, it be|came Rivalry.

With|out Purpose to focus its attention, it be|came Resentment.

With|out Pride to remind it of itself, it be|came Envy.

And so, Envy was a mis|shapen thing, and the pain of its amputations hurt Compassion - who had be|come Cole so that he would still re|member himself. And now Envy wanted to be|come the Bright One ( _snarled, tangled, torn in the making of her, she shines darkly_ ), but that would not help, only make more pieces fall away. It would not make it be|with the missing pieces of itself and of the not-itself ( _the many_ ). He had been like Envy once - wanting to take shape to keep himself, but the shape hurt, still, even with habit - ( _a scattered sort of thing_ ) an amputation. He could not be|with other than himself ( _singular_ ). He tried to be|with the fleshy ones, but it scared ( _scarred_ ) them, so he made them forget, took pieces, severed. He called that help, but in his worst moments, he doubted.

"I want to help," he had told the Bright One ( _she shines darkly_ ), but where to start? Alone, cocooned into flesh, universes apart, all ingrown into themselves, barely able to be|across - and never be|with - how does one fix the world of the severed?

The world cannot be|with itself anymore either. He is severed too.

He wants to help. It is the only thing left that makes him re|member.

* * *

 **One day after the events of "Acceptable Losses," somewhere in the Hinterlands. Solas, Dorian, Bull.**

 _"IB,_

 _We thank you for your message. Due to some recent developments — I cannot go into details here, as I am certain you understand — it is imperative that your team returns at once. We have most urgent need of Solas's skill, and there is absolutely no time for lingering, I am afraid. Dorian's expertise would also be very welcome. Please make sure that our Tevinter friend is at his best capacity for his return to Haven. All this to say — avoid exhausting the mages, if you can. Everything else is secondary._

 _I will add that the nature of the urgency is not a military one. At least, not directly. You may deploy your Chargers and other allies as you see fit, although I would be very grateful if the cargo from Redcliffe is delivered safely. We could most certainly use the additional information._

 _Luck and speed to you,_

 _L."_

He reads the message one more time, then hands it to the elven bas saarebas with a nod. Decent at hiding his reactions, that one. Still, Bull's not been Hissrad for nothing. There are always little tells. Even more than the face, you gotta watch the hands. There, that tic. A slight movement to the fingers, the same one the elf does when he's gearing up to cast.

He passes the letter off to Dorian — well, to the other bas saarebas if Bull wants to be technical. He's gotta keep it straight. Names are a public thing. He can't forget about their nature. Basra, he tells himself. He shifts, uncomfortable. Feels wrong, somehow. Been feeling wrong for a while, too.

He shouldn't have started that little game with the Vint. No good getting caught up in your own snare.

"Interesting," Dorian comments, and hands the letter back. "We return for Margo tonight, then. Sera says her people are not quite in position, but she is confident we can make do. We'll be on the road by tomorrow morning."

"No." Bull shakes his head. "Too much time wasted. We leave within the hour. We can catch up with the Chargers by midday tomorrow."

"I am not abandoning her to Alexius," Dorian grinds out. The bas saarebas exchange a look. Bull frowns. So. There's something they know about the elven spy that he doesn't. Interesting. He'll have to maneuver carefully, then. It would have been a good idea to put Blondie down before they left the castle, but he hesitated, and then the opportunity passed. If she blabs to the Vint magister, it'll be on him.

Still. She might not have the opportunity. It was clear that the Vint was hoping to use her as a trap for them — not gonna attack his former student without provocation, not with his son around. So the logical thing — maneuver them into making the first move. Bull would have done the same. At least the two mages didn't do anything stupid — saw that it wasn't a fight they'd win.

How much damage can Blondie do to the Inquisition's cause if the mage tortures her? Probably not too much — nothing he wouldn't get from one of Red's other spies. How much damage can she take before it kills her? Probably more than you'd think at first — Bull can see there's some steel in there — but not all that much either. Balances out all right, in the end.

He scratches the skin under his eyepatch absentmindedly, and almost breaks into a grin at the random memory. Fucking nappy cream. They were both three ales into it when she fessed up. Laughing like idiots.

"That's what soldiers are for, Dorian. We all know the risks going into it." Blondie's not even one of his soldiers. Yeah. Bas. Basra.

"It is not in our interest to leave her behind," the elf says. Bull squints at him. Nice work on the neutral tone. Someone who wasn't trained as a Ben Hassrath might even buy it.

"Is there anything about Blondie you're not telling me, Solas?" Now. The two of them aren't fucking — Bull would've been informed. Might have done them both some good to get it out of their system, but, eh, basra get particular about these things. Maybe he'll try to arrange for someone to take care of the elf, once Blondie's out of the picture. No good having him distracted.

He would've thought that's all it is. Except, what was that little look the two bas saarebas traded? Something there. What's he missing?

Ah, there it goes again.

"Only that making a habit of abandoning one's allies might leave one without any eventually."

Bull cocks his head. "Allies come and go, Solas. You give me a good reason to crawl back into that castle and put the entire mission at risk — disobeying a direct order from Red, while we're at it — and I might think about it."

The elf clams up.

xxxxxx

Dorian surveys their small camp. It will not take them long to gather their things and depart for Haven. From the hill where they stand, Redcliffe castle is still visible. And within it, Alexius — hostage to his own madness, and Felix, hostage to his father's blind inability to accept the limits of his own power. And in the middle of it all, Margo, who, by any measure, is perhaps one of the greatest scientific mysteries of his lifetime. Of many lifetimes.

And, as it happens, someone he has begun to think of as his friend, because such things are never just simple, are they now? No, no, that would be entirely too convenient, and if there is one thing the universe does not deal in, it is convenience.

"Solas, would you help me dismantle the wards?"

The elf gives him a quizzical look, but nods, and they begin to make their way around the perimeter. Dorian has no doubt that Bull can see right through this transparent stratagem, but it is the best he can propose under the circumstances. Once they are reasonably far away, Dorian casts a surreptitious muffling spell.

"We should perhaps just tell him," he offers cautiously, and begins to unravel the weave where the focal point of their protective barrier is anchored to the ground.

"I fear that such a course of action would be unwise."

Dorian notes, with mild irritation, that Solas is not even pretending to be disassembling the spellwork.

"I doubt that Bull would budge otherwise." He looks up from his task. "I thought you and our otherworldly friend had… a connection."

The elf, of course, does not dignify this with a response. Instead, he folds his arms over whatever passes for his armor today and considers Dorian with bristly rancor. "More relevantly, what will occur when your mentor discovers that there are multiple worlds? If he has willingly rent the fabric of time itself, what magics would he unleash if given a new canvas for his blind grasping for power?"

"He has lost his mind, yes, but it is not power that he seeks, Solas. He wants to save his son."

"The magister would stop at nothing in the process. His goal is power still, just under another guise. His son is nothing but a convenient screen to shield him from the unflattering truth."

Dorian looks up from the fizzling ward. He tries to quash the rising wave of hostility — he will not let himself be baited by a poorly veiled distraction tactic.

Still.

"There is, of course, the other problem." He looks around, and, assured that the muffling spell is holding, turns his eyes to the elf. He would not wish to miss his reaction. "The future Margo and I saw… Now, tell me, Solas. Why would Alexius put Evelyn Trevelyan through the Rite of Tranquility?" Aha! Dorian stifles a tiny smile. The reaction is infinitesimal, but he would not have survived Tevinter politics for as long as he did without the ability to notice such things.

"Are you... certain?"

"Surprising, isn't it? And all the more so when I realized that I, somehow, was the only one for whom this seemed to be a truly shocking turn of events. Such an interesting thing, the Inquisition. So many secrets. You and I share one, about our dearest Margo. And something tells me that you and Margo might share one as well. Who else, I wonder, might be in on it?"

Dorian watches the elf stalk away towards another focal anchor. He tears through it with nothing more than a perfunctory wave of his hand. When he returns, his expression is glacial

"This is neither the time nor place to speak of this, Dorian. As for letting the Qunari know… It would be a certain death sentence for her. As long as she is in your former mentor's grasp, the less important she appears, the better her chances. I will not have her executed at the hands of purported allies."

Dorian stifles another wave of irritation. "If you believe it better to have her die at Alexius's hand, I am afraid I do not share your preference. The other option would have the merit of being quick, without the additional unpleasantness of torture. And other... humiliations."

The elf flinches. Dorian quickly looks away in uneasy embarrassment. The dirty blow was beneath him. He should have held his tongue.

xxxxxx

They neither hear nor see — are deaf, and mute, and blind — and as opaque to him as rocks or clay or empty, soulless woods. More so, for those connect into the Dreaming on occasion, with fraying tethers still in place, though faded and forgotten. He seethes at the futility of their traded barbs, half-said half-truths dropped here and there like pebbles cast by children into a well to ascertain its murky depths.

This world he wrought is but a dream, an empty crust, a thing of shadows not much better than the Void itself. With time, he trains himself to see within its shades the hidden colors, life indexed by traces torn from essence, and thus delayed or muted. Most days, he summons the adjustment in perspective this requires: to not expect the pleasure of his words materialized, to not expect thought and emotion to come forth as form and flavor, to not expect his thinking, feeling self expanded and reshaped with fluid ease by being alongside.

Their very language clunks and abbreviates his thoughts, but it is not as vexing as the ineffectiveness of his.

The self-indulgent wallowing in his experience of loss produces nothing, except for bringing him to the other problem: the fact that the outworlder feels like kindred, her excess presence there for him to brush against (discretely... though sometimes less so, no point in lying to oneself), when he can focus on its quiet whispers (he finds himself occasionally distracted by other aspects). He thinks about it for too long, but has no answers: is it the body that cannot contain the essence fully, and so it spills, like vapor from a hidden spring beneath the snow? Is it intrinsic to her spirit? ('Soul,' he corrects. How could such a simplistic language come to be?)

Are all of them like this, where she comes from? What constitutes a Fadeless world? If it possesses subtle magics of its own — for to imagine the alternative immobilizes him with horrified revulsion — where does the magic dwell? No Dreaming and no Veil, and yet, he senses her as if she were a spirit (that useless word again). He theorizes different configurations. He must learn more — perhaps, new ways to understand the consequences of his actions, past and future, would spring of this.

Before, he would have sought to be|with other kin — Insight, and Wisdom, Serendipity, Discernment — to solve the limitations of his thinking. No more. They are all locked away within themselves, and he, within this body (in his defense, not of his choosing) is equally a rock (or clay, or wood) as any of his ill-assembled fellow travelers. He did not know that his decisions would forever cast him off in such a way — and in his pride, ignored the varied consequences of enfleshment. He summons Humor (or the memory of it). 'It' (this accursed language cannot fathom personhood without sex) would have found this deliciously ironic.

He should not dwell on this, but cannot help the question. Could she be|with? No, surely not, the Veil makes this impossible. The very thought should feel perverse (and yet...).

Still, on occasion, Wisdom will indulge him in debate, explaining patiently the things he overlooks (it has a true facility with words). But many others have become reclusive or hostile. Or desperate, and driven to possession.

Though if he can sense her in the Waking, then perhaps… But what would it entail? No. The knowledge brought by her unique perspective (or wit? Another self-deception...) should be enough, and more could be too much. What if insights thus generated change his plans, or twist his purpose? (He forces movement on his body lest the thought becomes translated as a more simplistic need. Another problem with enfleshment, this "translation." Too late. But there are wards to break. This should distract him well enough).

This speculation is but senseless torment. The opportunity to know what lies beyond this craven reticence of his will not present itself. He is, of course, the only one to blame for this particular development.

He cannot reach her in the Fade. "Have you considered that your perception is imprecise?" Wisdom had asked. He had. It is most probably correct, but he has not had the occasion to adjust it. And she cannot — or will not — reach for him...

There are more pressing matters to attend to. He noticed the disturbance in the Fade, and whispers carried on the ripples of its aftermath suggest...

Ensuring that the Herald lives should be his main priority — at least for now.

The mage's words jolt him out of his reverie.

"I was thinking. Perhaps we should have confidence in Sera's thieving abilities. And who knows, Margo herself might surprise us. In any case, in the unlikely event that all turns out well in the end, I thought I would leave a letter with Sera." The other mage produces paper and a quill. "Should you care to join me in this epistolary exercise, I will be over by the fire. If you want my opinion, I would venture that our task might be to convince Margo to come back. If I were in her shoes, I would not."


	47. Chapter 47: On the Road

_In which Margo finally escapes Redcliffe, and meets friends._

 _Well, folks - you've sat through some terribly angsty chapters. So here's something a bit more optimistic! As always many thanks for reading and reviewing._

* * *

The hallways feel endless. Margo adapts her gait to reflect the harried scurrying of the elven servants she has seen in Haven. The performance isn't a stretch: once the adrenaline of her successful escape from the room wears off, the terror kicks in with a vengeance. She hunches over her oversized bundle of fake "laundry," trying to take as little space as possible, and lets her legs propel her down the corridors. By sheer luck, she locates the servants' stairs quickly enough and hurries down.

On the second floor, a contingent of mercs trots by, and she hugs the wall with muttered apologies. They pay her absolutely no mind as they march off on whatever important business they've been entrusted with. Once they are out of view, Margo resumes her progress. Finally, heart hammering at breakneck speed, she makes it to the ground floor and comes to a stop at the base of the stairs. She hesitates. Left or right? In a moment of inspiration, Margo sniffs the air. If the heavy smell of cooked cabbage is anything to go by, the kitchens are somewhere to the right. She lets her nose guide her, with a vague prayer that the smell doesn't index anything more nefarious than uninspired cooking. Do demons smell like cooked cabbage? Cyanide, after all, does sometimes smell like bitter almonds.

There are no demons or questionable rituals at the other end of the smell — just a vast, windowless kitchen, humid, hot, and illuminated by the fires burning in two large hearths. Aside from a monstrous cauldron hanging from blackened metal hooks over one of the fires, and an assortment of breads and cheeses along a wooden counter, the space is in disarray — simultaneously understocked and messy, as if no one has been managing it properly in weeks. At one end of the counter an elven woman is disassembling a carcass with the help of a large cleaver and an unending string of muttered obscenities. Margo freezes. The thin red-head looks familiar. She recognizes the cook from the Gull and Lantern. Elandra.

The woman looks up, spots Margo, drops her cleaver on the table with a weighty thud, and quickly bustles over, wiping the blood from her hands on her apron. Judging by a complete absence of surprise in the elf's expression, Margo decides that somehow she was expecting her.

"Ah, good," the redhead nods approvingly. "Saved me some trouble there, lass." When Margo just blinks, Elandra grabs her by the elbow and drags her in the direction of an unobtrusive back door. "Well, don't just stand there catching flies. Come, now."

Margo is ushered into a narrow utility space that was likely the castle's main pantry before Alexius's hostile takeover disrupted the supply lines that kept it well-stocked. Elandra shuts the door behind them, picks up the wad of blankets Margo is still clutching, and dumps them unceremoniously into a nearby barrel.

"Gave them quite the runaround, didn't you?" the cook — who is quite clearly more than a cook — chuckles, and then scrutinizes Margo with a critical squint. "Oh, good. You found the little disguise I left you. Didn't have one in your size on such short notice, 'm'afraid. It's from one of the keep's former chambermaids, may she rest peacefully at Andraste's side."

"Wait," Margo finally manages. "You put the clothes in the drawer? Are you... here to help me?"

Elandra huffs impatiently. "Don't be silly, lass, 'course I'm here to help you. That's what we Friends do, isn't it? We've had everything in place for a day now — I was just waiting for the right time to fetch you. Looks like you made your own way out, though. Not one to sit about, heh?"

With another vaguely approving nod, Elandra leaves Margo planted in the middle of the pantry, walks over to a large cupboard at the other end of the room, flings its doors open, and, with another muttered curse, yanks on some unseen lever.

"Finicky ol' thing never works quite right from this side." A hidden mechanism groans in disapproval, and then Margo spots the back panel sliding to the right with a quiet squeak and a cloud of dust.

"Jenny! Come, girl. We're ready."

The little girl from the tavern pokes out her head through the opening, blue eyes sparkling with mischief. She spots Margo and offers her a wicked grin. The kid looks dusty, sooty, and thoroughly pleased with herself.

"'S'all ready, mama!"

"She's a Red Jenny?!" Margo finally manages.

The elven woman chortles. "Well, she's a Jenny. And she's red, alright. But no. Not yet anyway. Though she's got a good head for it, she does. She'll be taking over when she comes of age." There is pride in Elandra's voice. "And I can finally retire to bake pies."

Margo cocks her head in puzzlement. "Wait. How did you know to be so... prepared? How long has Jenny been in the tunnel?"

"Just the half-hour." Elandra smirks. "There are only two ways out of that room — out the window, or through the door. You don't strike me as stupid, so I figured I'd get ready, in case I was right about which way you'd leave. Better than scraping you off the rocks, that's for sure."

Elandra picks up a backpack from one of the shelves and thrusts it into Margo's arms.

"That's your stuff. Couldn't get your lute, but most of your other things are in here. What's with all the books, lass?"

"I read a lot?" Margo offers with a sheepish grin.

"Well, better you lugging all that around than me. My back's not what it used to be. Now. Tunnel's going to take you to the old mill — or what's left of it." At Margo's worried look, Elandra chortles. "Don't worry. Sera will be right there to meet you. We go way back, she and I. Put a thousands locks on it, and still that girl could swipe 'bout anything right from under some uppity noble's sneezer. You're in good hands now. Mind you, make haste. They'll savvy up to you not being in the lake eventually."

So. Sera hasn't abandoned her, at least. On impulse, Margo throws her arms around the elven woman. Elandra's return hug is brusque and efficient. "Andraste guide you, sister."

"C'moooon! Before the spiders are back." That's the kid, bouncing up and down impatiently on the other side of the opening. Margo slings her backpack over her shoulders, and, with a last thankful look at Elandra, crawls through into the tunnel, trying not to trip over her skirt in the process.

And Jan abandoned this woman? Sure, it isn't considered proper to think ill of the dead, but Margo decides that "boneheaded idiot" in this case is simply a statement of fact.

Jenny's warnings about spiders notwithstanding, the tunnel looks suspiciously well-traveled. Smokeless torches provide illumination at regular intervals. Every five hundred yards they pass a small alcove in the wall. At Margo's curious look, the kid grins, stops next to one of the little openings, and lifts a clay jar covered with a folded cheese cloth.

"I've been keeping these stocked since I was five," she announces. "There's water and medicines. We leave some food in there too, but you gotta seal it, cuz the rats will get it otherwise. Spiders, too, though they just make a mess of it. You thirsty?"

Margo nods gratefully and accepts the jug Jenny is offering. She gulps down the liquid. It is at room temperature but still retains a mineral aftertaste — and just the faintest trace of elfroot. Thirst slated, Margo returns the jug to its alcove, and Jenny resumes her quick progression down the tunnel. It's all Margo can do to keep up with the kid.

"So, you knew my dad?" the girl asks suddenly. She doesn't slow down or look at Margo.

After a brief hesitation, Margo responds with a cautious, "I did."

"Auntie Sera said he was around the 'Quisition, but then he got killed. Said you were there for it." Jenny stops, turns around, and fixes Margo with a serious gaze. "Was he brave?"

Margo hesitates, and then nods solemnly. This is not a child looking for coddling or saccharine euphemisms. "He was. In fact, he saved a lot of lives."

Jenny squints dubiously. "Mamma's brave too," she offers finally, with the edge of a nascent challenge, as if bravery were a zero sum game and there might not be enough to go around.

"She most certainly is. So that means you might be doubly brave, because you got it from both sides."

The kid mulls this over. "Duh," she finally confirms, then turns around and resumes her skipping down the tunnel.

It takes them about twenty minutes to arrive at a cul-de-sac with a crude wooden ladder mounted into the wall. Margo looks up. The passage extends vertically like the shaft of a well. At the very top she can spot the faint outline of a trapdoor.

"Wait here," Jenny orders, then clambers up the ladder with the agility of a squirrel. Margo watches her progress with an anxious little hitch in her belly — she half-expects the kid to slip on the rickety rungs. But Jenny is nothing if not sure-footed, and soon enough the trapdoor yawns into a bright rectangle of blue skies and white fluffy clouds. The kid hoists herself up over the lip of the opening and disappears into the glare with an, "All clear! Come on up!"

Margo begins her ascent, feeling as old and creaky as the ladder.

Closer to the surface, a wave of warm, grassy air greets her, and Margo's chest tightens with the feeling of sudden, buoyant joy. She does her best to quash the giddiness before it overwhelms her. Or before she jinxes something.

And then a pair of hands grab the shoulder straps of her pack, and she is yanked out of the earth like some sort of recalcitrant carrot.

She practically collapses on to of Sera.

"Oof! Watch it, Spindly."

"Spindly?"

"Yeah, you know. All short and sticklike and stuff. I guess it's fine, lots of us have that look, yeah?"

Margo blinks. "Elves, you mean?"

"Well, yeah, elves. Who'd you think I was talking about, Qunari? Guess I'm taller, though. And, ugh, Solas too. Now, there's a shite thought. Though Elfy loses height from keeping his head all the way up his arse." Sera, now seated cross-legged on a round patch of grass in the center of the circular ruin, laughs maniacally. "But not as spindly as Ellie. That one could never keep any weight on, worse than you. Jenny, if you and your mamma need to get out of this stupid dump, you know where to go, yeah?"

"Don't worry, Auntie Sera. We're gonna be fine." The kid grins. "We always are."

Jenny disappears through the trapdoor with a saucy little wave, like the world's jauntiest gopher.

Sera gives Margo a quick appraising look. "You ready to get outa here?"

"More than I can express," Margo nods.

"Fancy talker, but you're all right. People people. You better change the clothes, though. Brought your armor." Sera tosses Margo a pack, then proceeds to line up little bottles of glittery black dust in front of her. "While you change, here's the plan. You and I are going to sneak out past the big rift thingy."

"Is that a good idea?" Margo asks, unlacing her bodice and peeling off the sweat-soaked tunic with a relieved sigh. The one Sera hands her smells of lye soap and sunlight. Margo makes quick work of the chest bandages before pulling the fresh tunic on. At the sight of her old jacket, she practically bounces up and down.

Still, she'd kill for a proper bath. But glass half-full and all that.

"Friggin no, it ain't, but that's why we're showdering. And you don't even owe me anything for these ones — unless Adan goes back on his word and doesn't pay me back. Then I'll let you shake it out of him."

"Deal. Do we have a contingency plan? In case the demons at the rift aren't impressed with our sneaking?" Margo steps out of the skirt next. Her leather leggings and greaves have been cleaned as well. She could kiss Sera.

"We run?" the elf suggests. "Got your boots over there. Oh, and that balding chap and his niece — or whatever she is — you all rescued, he left a little present for you. Good for a bard type, he said. Nicked it from that Lexis pillock before they legged it outa Redcliffe. Left your old daggers, though, sorry. They stink."

Sera hands Margo a long leather sheath. The hilt that sticks out of it is made of a polished dark wood that appears to glow with its own reddish radiance. Margo folds her fingers around the haft. The wood is warm to the touch, and, despite its sheen, offers a frictionless grip. She pulls the dagger out of its sheath and draws an awestruck breath. The material resembles hematite — only dark blue — and the blade is curved at a vicious angle, like a miniature scimitar.

"Think it has a name, but I forgot. Who comes up with these stupid names anyway? 'Bleeder of Souls!' 'Audacity!' 'Andruil's Left Toenail — the extra pointy one!' Pish. What's wrong with just 'dagger'?"

"Thanks, Sera. That's... quite the weapon. You sure you don't want it? Because if not, then I think I shall call it 'Molly'." Margo's announcement is greeted by another one of Sera's maniacal cackles.

"See, that's why I like you. You ready? 'Cause this whole place is crawling with these Vinty prats in bathrobes, and I'd rather not waste my arrows."

From her position straddling the warm stones at the top of the wall that surrounds Redcliffe village, Margo can see the entirety of the settlement. An unusually large crowd is loitering by the shore. Small crescent-shaped specks litter the calm waters of the lake — from what she can tell, the boats are mostly dinghies, with the occasional fisherman's smack etching a line of ripples across the placid surface.

"That's a lot of boats," Margo comments quietly, matching her volume to the strange ambient whispers of the shadow powder.

"Looking for you," Sera whispers back. "Should keep 'em busy, yeah? 'Cause you're not in there."

They give the rift a wide berth, skittering along the edge of the cliff that brackets the town's southern gate. Margo steals uneasy glances at the hell-yolk that pulses and wobbles beneath them. Its otherworldly chiming grates at her senses. Beyond the gossamer curves of its spatial distortion, strange shapes ripple and stretch, straining the flimsy membrane.

When the whispers begin to fade, Sera silently hands Margo another bottle of showder.

They keep to the cliffs, staying beneath the shelter of the statuesque firs for as long as the trees last. Margo occupies herself with assessing their similarity to Earth's conifers. The firs look like classic Abies alba, but taller and narrower, with strobili that indicate the cypress family, judging by their shape. Margo snags a young shoot from a nearby branch, bites off the tender end, and chews thoughtfully. The fir tip tastes like juniper, but with an unfamiliar sweetness. Might be good for flavoring ale. She could start a new trend.

When the last of the conifers give way to leafy underbrush, Sera stops, selects a secluded little spot under what looks like a hawthorn shrub, and pulls a map from her pack.

"Dicey from here," she mutters. "Everything crawling with Vints all the way to the Crossroads." She taps the spot that presumably refers to the aforementioned settlement — though, for some reason, includes a drawing of an ass — with the knuckle of her forefinger. "They really didn't want to lose those two mages. Makes you wonder what else that Brand fellow pilfered aside from the dagger, dunnit? Gonna get worse once they realize you're not in the lake."

"Sera?" Margo sits cross-legged in the ocher dust and leans over the elven archer's map. She studiously avoids Sera's gaze. "Why did you come to get me? I mean, the others didn't, so... why did you?"

When the silence stretches beyond the edges of what is comfortable, Margo looks up. Sera is glaring at her with an incredulous scowl.

"Because friends don't abandon friends to crazypants mages, you ninny. Oh!" The elf proceeds to rummage through her pockets and, at length, produces three crinkled pieces of folded paper. "You wanna read these, yeah? Not that I did, I didn't! They each made me swear that I wouldn't peek. Boring."

Margo stares at the three missives in utter befuddlement, then folds them into her jacket pocket. If she doesn't think about it, she's OK.

"I'll deal with them later. What do you want to do?"

"So, I know this guy... We're gonna swing by and lay low for a bit, yeah? A day or two at most, and then it's back to the 'Quisition. Maybe pick something up for the cause while we're there."

"This guy — who is he, and how do we get there?" Margo asks. She wonders whether this might be a good time to tell Sera she's not sure she can — or wants to — go back. But if she's got a few days before they make return plans, perhaps the unpleasant conversation can wait a little longer.

"He's good people. You like honey, yeah?"

They encounter the skirmish by midday. From their vantage point at the top of the cliffs that bracket the path to the accursed town, Margo spies the small knot of fighters kicking up a cloud of brick-colored dust from the parched surface of the road.

Sera docks behind a boulder and readies her bow. "What's this, then?" she mutters, nocking an arrow and training it on the group. Margo crouches next to her and peeks out. There are four Vints circling around a familiar figure. The fighter in the center has traded his lion-embossed breastplate for lighter leathers and is wielding dual blades. The one in his right hand Margo's mind obligingly identifies as a rapier. The other one is a regular dagger. But the mop of sandy hair leaves little doubt as to the man's identity. So. Imshael fulfilled his part of the deal. Good to know.

"What's he doing here?" Sera hisses.

"You've met Ser Asshat... I mean, de Chevin?" Margo whispers, eyes still trained on the circling fighters.

Before Sera has a chance to respond, one of the Vints decides to try his luck, and the entire group bursts into motion simultaneously. Margo watches de Chevin dance through them with stunning efficiency. His fighting style is an odd combination of pedantic and underhanded, his movements precise, as if he's performing for an audience, except that he apparently has no problem deploying all the dirty tricks in the book, complete with kneeing his opponents in the crotch, stabbing them in the eye, and using them as human shields.

As the knight busies himself with fighting off three swordsmen at once, a fourth Vint proceeds to sneak away. Margo watches in consternation as the stooped hooded fellow extracts a gigantic grimoire from under his robes — how that thing fits in there is anyone's guess — and begins to mutter something ominous. The earth beneath the other fighters' feet flashes with a circle of incandescent gibberish.

"Sera, can you..."

Sera releases her arrow in the direction of the mumbling Vint, but the bastard jerks his head in their direction and motions with his hand, and Sera's arrow is bogged down in a bluish barrier. It clatters to the ground ineffectually.

The next thing Margo sees is a giant ball of flames flying towards them with an incongruously unhurried casualness — like it's just dropping by to say hello. Sera quickly steps out of the way. Margo darts to the opposite side, drawing her new dagger, and, before she can think better of it, skids down the rocky slope and takes off towards the mage. Something angry and primal slithers up her arm from where her skin touches the dagger's handle to pool and pulse at the base of her skull. Vaguely, as if through a reddish fog, Margo considers the possibility that the weapon is enchanted — or that the wood has been soaked in an alchemical compound — but before she can give it a proper thought, the mage raises his staff and a wall of flame erupts two feet in front of her. Margo simply leaps over it, like one might over a bonfire in some summer solstice ritual. The heat laps at her legs, but she barely notices. Before the mage can weave another spell, Margo sidesteps around him — whatever the hell the dagger is doing, it seems to mobilize her body's instincts and training much more effectively than she ever could — and with one fluid motion, she sinks the blade into the mage's kidney, going between the ribs.

Sera's next arrow pierces his trachea, finishing him off.

The red tint clears from her eyes, and Margo looks around in horror. What in the Void was that? Her attention is drawn to Ser Asshat, who has summarily dispatched two of his three opponents and is pulling his rapier from the twitching remains of the third. Margo quickly sheaths her new weapon. It feels alarmingly sentient. And it seems to be crooning in her head something that sounds suspiciously like, "Oooh, stab stab stab stab." Also, she's pretty sure it's cackling gleefully.

"Down, Molly, that's a good girl," she mutters, then releases the hilt, swings the scabbard onto her back, and rubs her hand off on her thigh, in case there are residual alchemical compounds on her skin.

Ser Lancelot the Lethally Efficient turns to Margo with a scowl, although his expression is more troubled than hostile.

"You," he comments. Ponders something. And then adds, "Appear to be alive."

For a brief moment, Margo is tempted to shamble about with her arms outstretched and groan something about brains, just to see his reaction. She quickly thinks better of it. It is doubtful that Ser Asshat would find this amusing. On a more clear-headed day, Margo decides that this overwhelming temptation to needle him should be considered more carefully, but for now she simply offers a mock bow. "Somehow, you always sound so surprised..." she trails.

They consider each other over the corpses.

"I had reason to think I would arrive too late." De Chevin's tone is guarded. Then the knight — who doesn't look like a knight at all anymore, but like a particularly well-coiffed ruffian — turns to survey Sera's exploration of their slain enemies' pockets and packs with a disapproving frown.

"Thought you were going with the Chargers?" Sera throws over her shoulder. "Oooh, look, two sovereigns. Dead rich git's the best kinda git. Didn't you say you were 'honor bound to accompany the Tranquil' something something?"

"I said I was honor-bound to get him to safety. Your Qunari associate's company appeared well-trained. A larger group makes for a less tempting target."

"Doesn't explain why you're back here." Sera yanks an amulet from the neck of another corpse and moves on to the rings next.

"I…" Lancelot the Discomfited clears his throat and looks at Margo. "Had reason to think that you might need assistance."

"That I need assistance? Or she does?" Sera favors the knight with a squinty-eyed look and a cocked eyebrow. "How'd the two of you get chummy, anyway?"

Margo watches Lancelot the Inexplicably Embarrassed fake his way through a cough and turn an alarming shade of pink. She frowns. Is this a Maile thing? Or is this an Imshael thing?

Sera's grin is a little wicked. "Oh, well, that should get Elfy in a tizzy. Works for me."

"It's not..." De Chevin shakes his head and emits a disgusted grunt. "Forget it. I would prefer it if I could escort the two of you to Haven. You may require an extra sword arm in your travels — the roads are crawling with Tevinter mercenaries."

Sera sniggers. "Sure, we can use a fancypants knight. Just don't be a prat, yeah?" She straightens. "'Cept, bees first, then Haven."

Margo blinks. What bees?

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the Friends of Red Jenny - who could be just about anyone you meet in here._

 _Next up: bees, of course, and maybe a familiar face if you've been exposed to Slavic folklore._


	48. Chapter 48: Honey and Vinegar

_Surprise! Happy upcoming Turkey Day for those of you celebrating. I decided to update a little earlier - an extra chapter this week in addition to the scheduled Friday update. Enjoy!_

In which Margo meets an odd beekeeper and reads three letters.

* * *

They arrive at the hut at dusk, after a long trek up a deserted mountain path — deserted, that is, if one ignores the goats who not only seem to have no fear of bipedal creatures but actively harass them for treats. "I'm gonna eat you for dinner if you don't quit it, Fluffy," Sera threatens one especially persistent one. Behind Margo, de Chevin stifles what might be a chuckle.

The goat butts Sera's arm with its nose and bleats. She swats at it ineffectually.

By the time they get to the grassy alpine meadow tucked away between the parallel crests of two ranges of foothills, Margo is practically collapsing from exhaustion. Her earlier euphoria at surviving has worn off, and the trials of the last few days finally catch up to her. She walks silently, focusing on her footing. A bleak sort of mood settles over her, like a suffocating cloud that mixes dread with apathy.

Below them, partially hidden in a copse of craggy, birch-like trees, stands a hexagonal wooden hut with a grass roof. Margo squints in the twilight, trying to identify the small circular structures scattered along the hillside. From where they stand at the crest of the hill, a low buzz drifts to them on the wind. Apiaries, she concludes.

They follow a footpath down to the hut and come to a stop in the middle of a small vegetable garden. A quick appraisal of the plants suggests that the owner — whoever or whatever it is — doesn't seem to be particularly picky about where things decide to grow. Potatoes and carrots are interspersed with elfroot and spindleweed. Off to the side, Margo spots a cluster of oversized umbellifers, next to a spattering of bright red flowers which, in the gloaming, resemble glowing embers.

"We're here!" Sera announces, and strides over to the sturdy wooden door. She knocks.

"The question is, where exactly is ' here '?" de Chevin mumbles under his breath as he comes to stand next to Margo. His eyes dart to her, and then he does a double-take, eyebrows drawn in a frown. "Are you… feeling well?"

"I'm fine," Margo nods curtly. "Tired."

Lancelot the Unconvinced clears his throat. "We must speak, you and I. After you've rested," he adds hurriedly.

Margo simply inclines her head in acquiescence. The unpleasant conversations will just have to line up and wait for their turn.

There is shuffling behind the door, and then it opens to a tiny crack. A narrow shaft of yellow light falls on the lopsided stoop beneath the threshold.

"Who comes?"

The voice is deep and raspy.

"It's Sera. Remember me? Let us in, or we'll eat all your carrots."

Some clanking noises drift from behind the door, as if the hut's occupant is fiddling with an unusually diverse array of locks and chains. And then the narrow strip of light widens to a full rectangle.

Margo decides that the man standing in the doorway can only be described as "a character." If Death could be personified, this guy would be it. All he is missing is a threadbare black robe and a scythe. Except, instead of the stereotypical outfit, he is wearing a roughspun off-white shirt that reaches to his knees, a pair of burlap trousers of an indefinite color, and enormous felt boots. He is at least six foot five, his body distributed in a single vertical dimension. The head that tops this ensemble is adorned with long, stringy white locks. The man's gaunt, wrinkled face looks like it has been chiseled by someone with cubist predilections. The light blue eyes, buried deep in purplish sockets, survey them with a keen — and not altogether friendly — intelligence.

"Sera, Sera," he mumbles. "You come. You go. You bring friends. Like your own kitchen, yes? Here, come. Bad luck standing on threshold."

Margo frowns. The accent seems… Nevarran? No. Something a little rougher, with rolled r-s, and hard h-s. In her own world's mapping, somewhere between Slavic and Turkish. The man steps aside and turns away, gesturing them inside with a bony, liver-spotted hand.

The house is oddly shaped but, to Margo, achingly familiar. There's the clay stove in the corner, with a pot of baked milk already turning towards its delicious shade of rosy gold. Jars of pickled vegetables occupy every available shelf. Bizarrely jovial doilies cover the surfaces not already taken over by the pickles. But the main occupant of the hut is honey. There is more honey than Margo has seen in her entire life. Winnie the Pooh would have an apoplectic fit.

The man points a long, gnarled digit towards a crude wooden table, with a carved bench on one side — its aesthetics vaguely Nordic — and a single throne-like chair on the other. The chair — or throne — has handrests stylized as lion's paws. The back is a loose representation of a griffon. For some odd reason the chimeric creature is outfitted with a truly spectacular (and entirely human) bosom. Margo catches both de Chevin and Sera staring at it in uneasy fascination.

"You. Friends of Sera, yes? Good. Sit. Food ready. Drink ready. Welcome. I am Goran. You tell names, I tell rest, yes?"

Margo blinks but decides to follow Sera's cues. The elf takes the middle seat on the bench, with Margo and de Chevin squeezing in on each side of her.

"We have to lay low. But it's just for a day or two, yeah?"

Goran — if this is indeed the man's real name — returns with a pot of stew and four wooden spoons. He doesn't bother with bowls. Instead, he sets the pot in the center of the table, and lets the spoons clatter next to it. Sera reaches for one, so Margo decides to follow her example. When in Rome... Their strange host flicks his wrist. From a nearby shelf a loaf of dark bread tumbles onto the linen tablecloth with a weighty thud. Somehow, the telekinesis doesn't surprise Margo one bit. Why not?

The last thing to materialize on the table is a large bottle of murky, honey-colored liquid and four ornate little glasses of frosted, gold-rimmed crystal.

"Stay?" Goran settles onto the throne and reaches for the bread, breaking off sizable chunks and handing them out in turn — first to Sera, then to Margo, then to de Chevin. "Maybe. Names first."

Margo shoots a quick look at Sera, but the elf just shrugs, then nods. "You better tell him. He's weird. He'll know anyway, so I don't know why he even asks."

Goran's pale blue eyes settle on Margo. He squints, then quickly turns to de Chevin.

"No, no. He first. You bring interesting ones, yes? Puzzles. Old Goran like puzzles."

"I am Michel de Chevin," the knight offers — to Margo's ear, a little defensively.

"Heh." The old man's gaze becomes distant, as if crusting over with frost. "Name. Name is key, yes? Borrow key, open door. Forget to return name, maybe. Think, 'Who knows?' Kill for it, hmm? Wear it for so long, think yours. Then — snatched away! Trade name for promise, keep honor. Worth it?" Goran smiles. "Nice young man. Stolen thing burns hole in pocket, yes? No need."

Margo notes that Ser Asshat blanches, but then his expression turns resigned. She files this away, for future reference.

Their host pivots his head slowly and looks at Margo. Shit. Aside from the fact that the guy is a dead-ringer for some kind of Theodosian interpretation of Koschei the Deathless, he also appears to be a seer. A linguistically peculiar one, to be sure, but a seer nonetheless.

"You, then. Name?"

"Margo," Margo offers cautiously.

"Margo what?" their host demands sharply.

"Duvalle," Margo adds after a brief hesitation.

Goran cocks his head to the side, then suddenly seems to lose interest and busies himself with the stew. "Eat. Cold soup — angry host."

They chew in slightly tense silence. Margo catches her companions' furtive glances on her, but she focuses on the food.

While they eat, Goran uncorks the bottle and pours the mysterious liquid into four glasses. He distributes them, once again in the same order as before, taking the last one for himself.

"Toast now. Then puzzle."

"All right. What's this one for, then?" Sera sniffs her drink.

"Changes to come." Goran fixes Margo with his piercing gaze. "Big changes. Need good friends, but who can tell?" He raises his glass. "Drink then. To good friends. The not so good ones? Well. Food for worms, maybe."

After a few moments, they all take the shot. Margo identifies the booze as an exceptionally strong mead.

"Now." Goran the Deathless sets his glass in front of him. "Margo Duvalle. Duvalle... Father Orlesian? Hmm. No… Elf. Forget. Not work like that here. Hide one name in the other. Good trick, yes. Immortality recipe like this, old. Put life in needle, put needle in egg, put egg in duck, put duck in hare, put hare in … anyway, forget. Put all in chest, put chest on tree, put tree on island, hope nice young man not come steal, yes? Know that one?" Goran cackles, though his eyes retain their strange, frosty sheen. "Old roots, old tree. Two branches. One here, one there. Long ago, not so different. Now?" He huffs an unhappy kind of chuckle, and shakes his head. "Now, all different. Dried up there. Broken here. Few left." He snaps to, his eyes clearing back to their keen, chilly focus. "Nice young woman. Stay with old Goran, maybe? Big help? No? Eh. Never stay. Anyway, time for bed. Tomorrow, work. Bees. Up with sun. Sleep here, sleep outside, where you find."

The old man stands up with a whole lot more sprite than his age warrants and walks over to a shelf in the corner. He selects a small clay pot, opens its lid, and fishes around in it. He produces what appears to be a dill pickle, examines it critically, then releases it back to rejoin its fellows. And then he picks up a glass jar of honey, so dark it is almost black, and carries his odd culinary combination to the table.

He turns to Margo. "You. Nested doll. Head small, thoughts big. Need honey. Ale, maybe. Pickles. Sleep outside, firepit out back. Morning wiser than evening, eh? You rest, sleep here. No funny business, no no. Old Goran has good hearing."

Margo finds herself alone by the firepit, a pot of honey, a pitcher of ale, and a jar of pickles for company. The night is mild. A quiet breeze rustles through the birches above her. The starry sky is bottomless. She spots a few familiar constellation. She recalls that the one that looks like a connect-the-dots representation of a uterus is called Draconis.

She extracts the three letters from her pocket and sets them out in front of her. Bull's, signed " The IB," is a simple folded note, without seal or envelope. Dorian's is secured with a seal, the imprint of a signet ring with interlaced D and P embossed in the red wax. Solas's is folded in some complex yet modest origami, giving the illusion of a seamless square.

Margo takes a swig of ale and fishes for a pickle. If she's going to do this, she might as well stress-eat her way through it. She reaches for Bull's envelope first.

She opens it and reads the blocky scroll.

 _"Blondie,_

 _Maraas shokra. Maraas kata. If you are reading this, then you understand the first principles._

 _A broken sword is a hundred nails waiting to become._  
 _Sometimes, a hundred nails is a sword waiting to become._  
 _(Of course, sometimes it's just a bunch of nails.)_

 _In the struggle, you emerge as your true form._  
 _When you come back, swing by the tent before you talk to Red._

 _Until we speak again._

 _The Iron Bull."_

Margo takes a swig of ale. Her first impulse is to fling the paper into the fire and watch it disintegrate. Instead, she folds it up meticulously and tucks it between the pages of her journal.

She contemplates the remaining two letters. Her eyes drift out of focus, and she sits, thoughtless, listening to the hoots of some nocturnal creature as the fire dances and crackles over the logs.

Half a mug of ale and a pickle later, she reachers for Dorian's.

 _"My Dear,_

 _Terribly awkward to contemplate the thought that this might never reach you. But, being the incorrigible optimist that I am, I would rather imagine you safely out of Alexius's clutches, preferably somewhere with excellent wine and easy access to heated baths. (You will be pleased to know that where we are currently this is most certainly not the case — poetic justice, I suppose.) Certainly preferable to contemplating the grim alternative._

 _I would have you know that you were the culprit of quite the altercation. After all, the truly wise man lets his enemies' hands win his battles for him. That we did not do Alexius's toil in his lieu was not the effect of any diplomatic acumen on the part of yours truly — much as I wish I could boast of such a feat — but of sudden trouble brewing back at the home port._

 _I wish we could have come for you ourselves. I hope you can find it in your heart to consider Bull's actions with some leniency. I advocated for telling him the truth about you in the hopes to sway him, but Solas fought me on this with the full force of his frosty ire and snide remarks, and I fear I desisted too quickly under the onslaught._

 _If I were the praying type, I would apply myself to asking some abstract and likely altogether absentee deity that Sera's plans to extract you succeed. As I am not, I fear my petitions would only irritate. Know, however, that you are in my thoughts._

 _And last but not least — forgive me, my friend. We are, all three, in your debt._  
 _(I am simply man enough to admit it.)_

 _D._

 _PS: Please do return to Haven soon. My presence has been expressly requested, as was Solas's. I would feel infinitely better about all this if I had someone to "collude" with. These southerners are a terribly humorless bunch."_

Margo finds herself smiling despite herself. She folds Dorian's letter carefully and sits with it between her fingers for a few minutes, her eyes fixed on the flames. Eventually, she tucks it away next to Bull's missive.

There is only one letter left. Margo reaches for the ale and takes a long gulp, then settles the pot of honey into her lap. There. It's not ice cream, but it'll do. After a few sticky-sweet spoonfuls she sets the pot aside and picks up the square of paper.

It takes her an inordinate amount of time to unfold it — her fingers tremble in the most undignified way — but, finally, the note springs open.

 _"-Vh-_  
 _-Leth-_  
 _-H-_  
 _Margo,_  
 _-I-_

 _Words are inadequate. To hope that this scrap of writing will undo what was wrought is as absurd as seeking to remedy a deluge with a ladle. And yet, this is precisely its intent._  
 _If you are reading this,_

 _The Qunari does not know, and thus made his decision in ignorance. Dorian sought to alter his course, but I feared the truth would only put you in greater danger._  
 _-If am I to_  
 _-If you were to-_  
 _Death at the hands of a friend is no less final, and yet I could not abide the thought. Ironic. He does not see this now, but he may yet._  
 _-I-_  
 _No. Business, then. I would tell you what transpired. The rest I shall leave to your judgement. On the afternoon of our departure from Redcliffe castle, we received a message from Haven. We are forced to make haste — my presence is required, but even if we succeed in making time, it may prove insufficient. Dorian's return has been requested also, although the reasons behind the summons remained unstated._

 _I have my suspicions. We shall see if they are confirmed. There have been whispers in the Fade, but purpose blinds us, it would seem, and I ignored them for too long — at all our peril._

 _Should my theories prove correct, as one allied with the Inquisition, I must ask you for a favor you have no reason to bestow. Return. If the Herald is what I think she is, then your presence here is tied to her in a manner much more immediate than I had originally anticipated. In the days to come, understanding the full extent of this connection might prove pivotal. Dorian told me what the potential future you saw holds for the Herald. I would not wish this future on her. It is a horror, no less so if performed at the hands of allies._

 _As your friend (a lexical inadequacy, is it not?), I cannot but counsel for the opposite. I beg you, flee. Hide. Find passage to Rivain._

 _Wisdom guide you,_

 _Yours._  
 _S._

 _PS: Whichever course of action you select, I will wait for you in the Dreaming."*_

Margo folds the letter, tucks it away, hugs her knees, and rests her forehead on her forearms.

It would be easier if she could cry.

Her eyes remain dry.

* * *

 _* -[text]- stands in for strikethrough text_

 _This chapter was brought to you by a little folkloric Easter egg, namely Koschei the Deathless, who appears to have retired from kidnapping young brides and sitting on his pile of gold, and is now militarizing bees somewhere in Thedas (I'm of course not saying that Goran is actually Koschei, but that this is who served as a prototype for fleshing out Goran's character)._

 _Next up: Margo finally has a much overdue Eureka moment, and has the (dis)pleasure of waking up to Michel de Chevin._


	49. Chapter 49: Uncomfortable Truths

_In which Margo wrangles with some much overdue insights, and has a sparring session._

* * *

Margo sleeps fitfully. As she drifts off, she summons the riverbank with Baba's old shed, but without the alchemical enhancer from the lichen, it is difficult work. The first time, the vision devolves into an uncontrolled dream of drowning, where the river morphs into the lake next to Redcliffe. There are awful things in the water, brushing against her legs. She wrenches herself out of the nightmare with an inarticulate gasp.

She shivers, huddles deeper into her bedroll, and stares at the stars above until the last of the horror drifts off on the breeze. And then she closes her eyes and tries again. The second time, she dreams of the clusterfuck future, except she is wandering down the castle's deserted hallways with nothing but a shaggy, mangy wolf with glowing red eyes for company. Not only does the damn thing pant with an asthmatic wheeze, but it stinks of wet dog like you wouldn't believe. She forces herself to wake from that particular unpleasantness as well. What is it with her and wolves?

The third time is the charm — sort of. Margo breathes out a relieved sigh at the familiar weeping willow, the lily pads, the tall summer grasses — until she turns around and gapes in consternation at the new addition to the shed.

The hut has sprung chicken legs.

Every time Margo tries to come near it, the house waddles away. When all attempts at a frontal assault fail, she switches tactics and tries a surreptitious approach. She pretends she's just wandering by, examining the flowers — feeling ridiculous the whole way hut proceeds to scratch at the dirt with its oversized and alarmingly sharp talons and scoots away whenever she comes too close. After several failed experiments, Margo leaves it well enough alone. Eventually, the unaccommodating thing settles into a kind of somnolent torpor, occasionally pulling one leg or the other into a scaly little fist under its belly.

For lack of a better alternative, Margo lays down in the grass and, to occupy herself, arranges the clouds above her into a swirling spiral. She thinks. What is the likelihood that she will survive if she were to return to Haven? Conversely, what is the likelihood of surviving if she does not? She tries to put herself in the spymaster's shoes. If she defects, Torquemada will likely assume that Margo compromised the Inquisition while under Alexius's "care" and will send someone after her to retaliate. If Torquemada doesn't, then Bull might, as a matter of principle. She found some Qunlat references in the Genitivi tome and translated the two unfamiliar phrases: "There is nothing to struggle against. Nothing has ended." Ambiguous. Either way, it is hard not to read his letter as a veiled order to return.

Dorian's missive reads to her as both an apology and a cautious warning.

Solas's… Well.

Margo forces herself to finally consider the pile of inconsistencies that surround the elf, and that she has, so far successfully, crammed under the blasted Persian rug. Solas, she has learned, is an apostate, a self-taught mage who has never been part of a Circle. From overheard conversations — most of them with Cassandra in the Fallow Mire — she gleaned a schematic sense of the elf's purported biography. With an emphasis on "schematic" — and on "purported." She might not know enough about the mechanics of learning magic in this world, but she would be an idiot to overlook the other aspects. What is the likelihood that a reclusive hermit should teach himself not only complex philosophical concepts, but the rhythms and social conventions of academic debate? Because, if she would just take a second to shelve her infatuation and examine their interactions objectively, she would notice the pattern. And, of course, it has been part of the attraction from the start, at least for her.

But therein lies the problem. In this particular regard, they are too well matched.

Margo sends the clouds to spiral in the opposite directions. Consider Exhibit A. Solas grasps alien concepts too easily. He transposes them too fluidly to his own knowledge. He finds equivalences and parallels — as if it were something he had been trained to do. Their philosophical "debates" — and, at the thought, Margo makes a concerted effort to ignore the memories of the more physical dimensions of their encounters — are the sort of dance that presumes that both partners know the steps. However different their epistemologies, Solas works to find a common denominator, just as she does — and this, in itself, should have been the biggest clue. It isn't just a matter of cognitive abilities, but one of cultivation: to think with and against others, to put one's thoughts into specific forms of speech requires training. It requires comrades. Fellow travelers. Guides and mentors. Like everything else, it requires practice. Practice unlikely to be available to someone who has steered clear of conventional forms of sociality for… how old is he, anyway? He has made claims to befriending spirits, of course. Do spirits have such a complex social organization that they have academic debates with each other? Margo frowns. The spirits she has encountered at the rifts certainly don't seem interested in discussing philosophy. But it is doubtless that there are complex members of their species — if species is a term that can be applied. Unpleasant as Cosmic Asshole is, he at least appears to be a sophisticated life form.

Still. There is the problem of class. Solas might not dress like it, but the elf carries himself like someone from a social elite: down to the clever flirting, more 18th century French courtier than ascetic recluse from some forgotten village. His sympathies might be with the downtrodden — and even that isn't entirely consistent, if she thinks about it — but his demeanor tells a different story about his own origins.

If he were human, the discrepancies would have easily fit into a rather romantic — if stereotypical — story about a nobleman hiding his origins, perhaps because of struggles over inheritance, or perhaps out of a revolutionary orientation. But in this case? No such social niche appears to exist for elves in Thedas.

Not to mention the proverbial cherry on the cake. What did she ask the Solas construct in the hypothetical future? Margo stops the clouds from swirling and with a wave of her fingers makes them congregate into a heavy cumulous with a grey, rain-laden underbelly. " What are you ?" He had taken the question differently from how she had meant it. At the time, she had not managed to focus on the dissonance — too distraught to pay much attention beyond the pain of seeing his emotional response to her, and too easily swayed by the dream logic and the heartbreak of his impending demise. So, what did he think she was asking? She wrestles herself from the soul-sucking vortex of recalling his last words and wrangles her mind into following a dispassionate, analytical track. If A, then B. He looked like he was about to come clean in some way. About something she hadn't known about. And, based on the construct's response, it didn't appear that the confession — whatever it would have been — was rehearsed. An educated guess would suggest that, even as they became lovers, he had never shared the secret he had been about to reveal.

A drop of rain falls on her cheek. Margo quickly disaggregates the clouds back to their feathery state, before she ends up with a downpour. Why had she not asked these questions before? She takes a deep breath. Because of the ritual, of course. One of their earlier encounters in the Fade, where he taught her to identify him: it had created a kind of artificial certainty, an intuitive feeling of knowing the nature of him. It had bypassed logic, silenced the questions she should have been asking, and offered a false sense of intimacy. In her defense, she did not have enough context to realize how strange it was for a mage — even an elven mage — to transact with spirits. In fact, wasn't their initial ill-fated experiment, where he had reconstructed Maile's memories, derived from something he described as a type of funerary ritual for spirits? At the time, she hadn't known that most cultures of Thedas — aside, perhaps, from the Avvar — do not consider spirits to be persons.

One does not, by and large, have funerary rites for entities that one does not endow with personhood. Which begs the obvious question: what makes Solas different?

This brings her to the other problem. The blasted nicknames. Consider Exhibit B. In dredging up Maile's memories (of which a chunk is now missing once again, courtesy of Cosmic Asshole, since Margo can no longer recollect the face of Maile's lover, but only the fact of their encounter, and the experience of Solas reconstructing it for her) the elf had referred to her as da'elgar. Little spirit. Much as Imshael is so fond of doing. Solas, of course, has cycled through a variety of other endearments since, but tends to default to "lethallan." And yet, his explanation of the term's meaning has little to do with how the word appears to be used in modern Elvhen.

Margo frowns. Whatever it signifies, it isn't a reference to their shared Homo Elveticus status. There is always that trace of disappointment — or, perhaps, alienation — whenever he mentions other elves, whether they be urban or Dalish. It is always they . The Dalish. The city elves. But perhaps the biggest clue is Solas's own translation. Kindred spirit.

Margo's breath hitches, the sudden shock constricting her chest and numbing her lips. The dream wobbles, and she rushes to stabilize it, rerouting her attention to its textures until the vision stops fraying at the edges. What is the likelihood that he does not mean this metaphorically? That the heart of the statement isn't "kindred" — which is what Margo had focused on, her reason clouded by whatever absurd schoolgirl crush she has somehow managed to develop — but the second part?

Spirit.

She almost arrived at this thought on prior occasions but always dismissed it before it could fully take shape. It explains too many things. It explains, partially, Imshael, and their apparent awareness of each other. Consider Exhibit C — give or take. Solas does not seem to be terrified of Cosmic Asshole — only worried about its effects on Margo. And Cosmic Asshole, if their original encounter is anything to go by, appears to know a whole lot more about Solas than would seem fitting.

Margo forces herself to breathe — in the maelstrom of realizations, she is forgetting this otherwise useful activity. While he impersonated Solas for the first time, Imshael told her stories derived from memories encased in the Fade. Sure, the bastard tends to fish around her mind to flavor its intimidation tactics — but this stuff, Margo hadn't known about. Wherever it was getting it from, it wasn't from her.

And then, in addition to the more logical, easily graspable inconsistencies, there are the subtle warnings. Baba had offered cryptic comments almost every time the topic of the elf came up. Margo's alleged taste for bitter roots. The bizarre references to wolves. The allusions to fate. And then, the latest. What was it? "It is not the trickster's fault that the fool is trusting?"

With the sudden horror of the very axis of her existence being wrenched away from her, Margo realizes that she never gave any serious thought to what the apparitions of Baba actually are either, lulled as she was into her habitual dismissal of dream states as simply extensions of her own psyche. Dear unmerciful universe, but she has been unforgivably, pathetically stupid. On all accounts. Putting aside the fact that she got herself tangled up with a man she knows nothing about — and who, by all evidence gathered, is at least lying by omission about who or what he is — how did it not occur to her to question Baba's ontological status? Baba, after all — her baba — is dead. Has been dead for years. The relief of seeing her again should not have overshadowed the obvious. Not when there is no such thing as "just dreams" in her new world.

She grinds her teeth. It is the same problem as with Solas. Baba feels right. Authentic. Her identity self-evident in the very nature of her. It never occurred to Margo to dig deeper: how does she know? What, exactly, is the mechanism behind that recognition? And, of course, the answer should be clear as day. Occam's razor: same damn rules apply. She "knows" Baba in the same way that she "knows" Solas in the Fade. Has he not told her as much? What were his words, all those weeks ago, when he showed her how to differentiate him from Imshael? Perhaps because this is the Fade, the memory floats up, a perfect echo. " It is not part of normal interaction outside of the Fade, and I have never attempted it with someone who is not fully a spirit." The explanation he offered at the time was that it is something mages do commonly when transacting with spirits. A prevarication, in retrospect, since most mages, at least those indoctrinated by the Chantry, are terrified of spirits and associate them with possession. Brother Genitivi did not mince words on that particular topic. Some mages, such as the Dalish and apostates — and the Avvar, of course — might indeed, transact. But certainly not most.

Although that is not the crux of the issue. Margo begins to gather the clouds back into a swirling spiral. Why would a mage need to make itself known to a spirit? From her experiences with Imshael, spirits have no problem accessing such essential knowledge, and they do so unbidden easily enough. The directionality is wrong. Again, it had been there all along, in Solas's own words. This is how spirits make themselves known. How did she not realize this before?

Margo frowns, and lets go of the weather control. The clouds promptly reshape themselves into the outline of something that looks a whole lot like a howling wolf. And then morph once again. The next cloud formation jettisons its lupine impersonation in favor of something distinctly… well. Margo scowls at the sky. No, Monsieur Magritte, this is indeed not a pipe.

"You're not what we'd call subtle, are you?" she mumbles.

She takes hold of the misbehaving cloud cover and dissipates the giant phallus back into a spiral.

Focus. She was at spirits. The spirit hypothesis doesn't help her with explaining the apparent class discrepancy, nor does it give her any clue as to the mechanics of how such a thing would be possible in the first place. A body snatcher, like her? Or what the locals call "abomination?" How else would he cross over? Are spirits all, like Imshael, master imitators? No. She has to take something as axiomatic here — if she lets it all become empty performance, she will be one step away from howling at the moon in solipsistic paranoia. The Fade "fingerprint ID" that Solas left her with has actual efficacy. Otherwise, Imshael would have been able to replicate it, and the entire exercise would have been moot.

"Who in the Void are you?" she whispers at the sky.

And this brings her to the final question. Forget Solas — whatever he is — for a moment. Who in the everloving fuck is Baba?

All right. One damned thing at a time. Consider Exhibit D — or whatever letter she should be at by this point — namely the hut and its chicken legs. This is, originally, Baba's shed. And the legs — well, she knows where the damn legs come from. From the fairytales Baba told her and Jake when they were children. It is her dream. Margo squints at the clouds, which have by now adopted the likeness of a bearded man with little round glasses. She flips the vaporized Dr. Freud the bird. Not subtle indeed. Like normal dreams, the Fade borrows from her emotional and cognitive landscape, and there is a language to the borrowing.

The hut on chicken legs is where the apocryphal witch dwells.

Might as well just go and ask, then.

Margo forces herself to stand up, turns to the hut, and wags her finger at it. "I'm on to you, sneaky thing." The house shudders, as if it's ruffling imaginary feathers. Margo takes a deep breath. All right. Here goes nothing. She makes her voice carry. "Little hut, little hut!" she declaims, feeling utterly stupid. "Turn your back on the forest floor and turn to face me with your door. I want to sit and break some bread. I want to sleep and rest my head."

There. Something like that. Ritualistic fucking house.

The hut sort of careens to the side. Margo can almost hear an interrogative, "Bawk?" It takes a few tentative steps — to the right, then to the left. And then it kind of shrugs and scratches at the dirt.

Right. There is no forest.

"Oh, just turn and face me, you silly old thing," Margo huffs impatiently.

With this clearer set of directions at its disposal, the hut waddles over. The door swings open with a rusty squeak.

She steps in.

"Baba?"

The hut is empty.

With a jolt, the dream is wrenched from her. Margo opens her eyes with a start.

The first thing to come into focus is Ser Asshat. The fellow is crouched by her bedroll like some Pre-Raphaelite knight impersonating a particularly malevolent Boschian imp. He is casually twirling a dagger in his fingers. And he is peering at her intently, his eyes a stark, icy blue in his pale face.

"Awake?" he asks.

"No," Margo grunts with undisguised hostility.

Ser Asshat frowns, but collects himself quickly. "Do you have much experience fighting with enchanted weapons, my lady 'Margo'?"

"Good morning to you, too," Margo scowls in return. She sits up and takes one more look at the guy's hands. Lancelot the World's Most Unpleasant Alarm Clock is holding Molly. Shit. She notes that he is wearing a pair of leather gloves and is handling the weapon very carefully, almost gingerly. She also notes, a little belatedly, that he has tagged the auditory equivalent of scare quotes around her name.

"Not as such," Margo retorts dryly and rubs her face with both hands, trying to readjust to the waking world. The thrice bedamned Ser Asshat woke her up just as she was considering the meaning of the hut's emptiness. At least the rest of the dream remains vivid, and with a mental thanks to whatever entity might be receiving adulations on this not particularly fine morning, Margo commits her analysis to memory. Right. She has a new purpose, if she survives all the rest of the insanity. "Baba" first. And then "Solas" right after — speaking of dubious air quotes around purported claims to identity. All the other unpleasantness will just have to get in line and wait its turn. Maybe she'll start issuing tickets.

As she muses over this, Ser Asshat returns the dagger to its sheath and hands it to her.

"The others are asleep still, and I would be grateful for a sparring partner this morning, if you would humor me. Allow me to show you a few basic moves. Not with this weapon, of course. We will use a practice blade." He stands up.

Margo narrows her eyes at him. His words are flawlessly courteous, but there is an edge to his tone. There will be no dodging this.

"Let me get myself sorted, and then I will join you."

Margo makes her way to the wooden outhouse first, then walks over to the well in the center of the courtyard. She lowers the bucket down until she hears a distant splash. De Chevin promptly joins her there and proceeds to twist the crank, saving her the labor of pulling up the water-laden pail. Margo isn't sure whether this is chivalry or distrust. Once the bucket is within reach, he lifts it up and tilts it over Margo's cupped hands. She goes through the motions of washing her hands and face. To say the water is brisk would be an understatement. After that, they trade, and Margo pours the water into his hands — after squashing the temptation to dump the bucket's glacial contents over Ser Asshat's head in retaliation for the utterly inappropriate wake-up call. Who in the Void does that?

This sorry excuse for hygiene completed, Margo follows the knight to a small patch of packed dirt at the back of the courtyard. She notices that he wears no armor, only an open-collared shirt and loose fitting trousers. Objectively speaking, he makes quite the sight, but Margo finds the knight's good looks supremely irritating. De Chevin reminds her of the blond, square jawed standard issue asshole from a Nazi propaganda poster. There really is such a thing as too symmetrical.

"Shouldn't we be armoring up?" she asks.

"No." He takes off his gloves and sets them down on a nearby woodchopping block. "If you are intent on using such a weapon, you will want to fight at close quarters. It is easier to train without additional encumbrances." He picks up two short wooden daggers from the same block of wood and hands one to her. Well, then. He's been planning this, apparently.

"We will start with a single dagger, then add another one if we have the time."

For the next half hour, Lancelot the Purposeful seems earnestly focused on nothing more than sparring. The techniques he demonstrates — and which he insists on labeling with utterly ridiculous and overwrought names, like " Bear Mauls the Wolves" or " Fennec Escapes the Mountain Lion" — are a mixture of knife work and grappling.

"There are different types of enchantments. Your new weapon mobilizes your instincts," he explains. Margo forces herself not to roll her eyes at the punctilious tone. Except, of course, the knight is efficient. She supposes she would be a fool to turn her nose up at the free training session. "As with regular dagger work, if your opponent has greater reach, you will need to shorten the distance. However, the magic in the blade may impede your ability to strategize. You must act fast."

He runs Margo through drill after drill, each time getting her to deliberately step much closer than self-preservation would suggest and quickly exploit the available opening for a killing blow. And then, after she finally gets the hang of it, he crouches at the last moment, hooks his forearm under her knee, and sends her down into the dirt. Margo lands on her back, the breath rushing out of her lungs. Ser Asshat exploits this immediately and attempts to pin her down by straddling her. He pulls no punches, putting his entire weight on her hips. He lunges for the fake blade in her hand. With a brief mental thanks to Blackwall, who mercilessly ran her through the grappling routines, Margo twists sideways from under the knight before he can pin down her wrists, hooking her legs around him in a standard guard position, with her ankles crossed at the small of his back. By that point, Margo is in an utterly foul mood. Which is why she inches closer, using his lower back for leverage, and straightens her legs into a vise. Lancelot the Inexplicably Blushing makes a bizarre rookie mistake, and, instead of leaning forward to weaken the hold, leans back in an instinctive attempt to loosen the pressure on his kidneys. And, of course, releases her wrist. Margo gives the area over his liver a nice, not altogether symbolic stab with her wooden blade.

"You have a punctured liver," she announces. "What do you want to call this one? How about 'Little Ant Bites the Annoying Dung Beetle'?"

There's a flash of white teeth, and it takes Margo an inordinately long time to identify it as smile. Previous to that, she hadn't been sure that the expression was in Ser Asshat's repertoire. His breath is coming fast, and Margo notes that his cheeks are pink. "I yield. I believe you can let go now."

Margo promptly unhooks her legs, scoots back into a sitting position, and hands him the wooden blade, hilt first.

"Thank you for the training." She narrows her eyes. "Now, what was this really about?"

Lancelot the Suddenly Embarrassed sits on his haunches in front of her and twirls the fake dagger in his fingers. "I had to know whether your story about memory loss was true."

"And this settled the matter for you how, exactly?"

"It matters not, now." He lets out a slow breath. "I... will take your statement at face value. I suppose you would not recall that when last we met in Orlais, I was... unforgivably rude. Among other things, I had told you that you would not survive the year. When the demon began to wear your face, I took this as confirmation." The skin around his eyes crinkles with a smile. "I am pleased to see that I was mistaken."

So. Imshael did not spill the beans about her new identity when he was visiting with the knight. Margo forces her expression to remain neutral — the better to offer a convenient canvas for yet another fellow's wild, and inevitably erroneous, projections. And in the process, she tries to stuff the bitter loneliness that comes with it under the rug — except, at this point, there is no more room under there. She has yet to meet someone in her new world for whom she might just be Margo, without the added baggage of their expectations. She averts her eyes and stares down at the dirt.

"You weren't wrong," she says finally. Just one less deception. Is that so much to ask for? "The woman you knew, whomever she was, is dead. I am not her. I'm sorry."

When no response follows, Margo forces herself to look up. De Chevin's expression is a questionable cocktail of wistfulness, longing, and resignation. Margo tries not to groan. Andraste's silky knickers, as Varric would have it, really, Maile?

"I know what it is to take on the name of another in an effort to forge a new life, my lady. Your origins do not matter. Your past... does not matter. Only your actions." Lancelot the Incredibly Stubborn peers at Margo with an anxious expression, then leans towards her. "I owe you... a debt. From our first encounter. I will apply myself to settle it, but I shall respect your wishes, and it will remain mine to bear alone. But I do not believe that us meeting again is a matter of coincidence. Not when you and I now have the demon in common. What could it be but fate?" Before Margo gets the chance to reconsider whether dumping a bucket of water over the knight might be a helpful approach after all, de Chevin stands up and extends his hand to her. After a brief hesitation, Margo allows him to help her up, but instead of letting go of her hand, he pulls her a little closer, and fixes his eyes on hers.

"Come with me," he blurts out. "Together, we can put an end to Imshael. I have gone down the path the demon has pushed you towards. I have taken his deals when things became desperate, or in an effort to outwit him. It only made matters worse. I vowed to make Thedas safe from him, but he keeps eluding me. Between the two of us, I am confident we could find a way to eliminate him." There is a weird desperate little hitch to the knight's tone.

Margo extracts her hand from Ser Asshat's grip, and takes a small step back. "I have sworn my allegiance to the Inquisition," she parries quickly. Whatever her own feelings about going back to Haven might be, she is not about to embark on a wild goose chase with Lancelot the Suspiciously Eager. Especially since, by his own admission, the knight has been at this particular self-imposed task for about a year — with very little results to show for it. In principle, eliminating Imshael is an excellent idea. It doesn't mean that this is the man for the job.

"Your organization is pursuing a worthy cause, but they have no real need of you. Is this not why you wished to leave your old life behind when we met? Why the bard's life appealed?"

Margo watches him cautiously and thinks. De Chevin, aside from apparently having at least a passing acquaintance with her body's previous occupant, is not entirely wrong in this. It fits with Margo's own understanding of Maile — uncomfortable as the thought about their shared commonalities might be. She has inherited from the other woman more than her physique and her poor choices, but also the structural pressures and limited possibilities that bracketed her life and that she sought to escape. And, as much as Margo is loathe to admit it, the central thing that has shielded her from some of these structural pressures appears to be the Inquisition.

Well, there's a shite thought, as Sera would have it.

"Hypothetically speaking," she says, "where would you begin, anyway?"

De Chevin momentarily sports a look of such radiant hopefulness that for a second he looks almost charming. "There is someone I have been attempting to track down. It is what brought me to the Hinterlands, in fact. Back when we met, you had mentioned that you had some connection with the Dalish — a clan in the Free Marches, though I forget the name. Something with an L. The woman we would be looking for is Dalish as well. She... might be in search of a new clan."

Before de Chevin can finish, an ear-splitting whistle pierces the air. They turn in the direction of the sound.

"Lazy guests, angry host," Goran booms from the other side of the courtyard. "Breakfast, then bees. Hurry now, much work."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the little hut on chicken legs._

 _Next up: departures and conversations in the Fade._


	50. Chapter 50: Dream Beings

_In which the team obtains bee grenades, and Margo meets Solas in the Fade._

 _[Author's note: a bit ahead of schedule because tomorrow is going to be too busy to post]_

* * *

Breakfast consists of some unholy combination of porridge, potatoes, carrots, and lard. Once it's been ingested, they spend the first half of the day on the grumbling end of Goran's ire. Before he agrees to fulfill Sera's bizarre request of "bottling some angry bees," the old man has them gather honey and beeswax, haul water, and even weed his garden, all to the accompaniment of rather unflattering commentary whenever, in his estimations, their actions, words, or facial expressions "make bees shifty."

In an attempt to distract their host from his grousing, Margo asks Goran whether he uses propolis. His face lights up with genuine delight, and the next ten minutes are spent listening to an exposition on the wondrous properties of "bee glue." By the end of it, both Sera and Lancelot the Profoundly Not Interested are giving Margo dirty looks. Margo, however, could not be happier.

After a noonday meal of honey-glazed root vegetables, Goran takes them uphill to a particularly large apiary built at a distance from the others. To Margo, the pitch of the buzz that surrounds it sounds distinctly unfriendly.

"These ones. No good for honey. Wrong bees, hmm?"

Margo, at the back of their little procession, stifles an inappropriate fit of hilarity.

"Can we throw them? Bees to the face!" Sera cackles maniacally.

"Is this... ahem. A wise course of action?" de Chevin asks uneasily.

"Brilliant, innit? Uh-oh. Don't tell me the big fancy Orlesian chevalier is scared of little bees! They're bugs, Knighty, not dragons."

"I would much prefer dragons," Lancelot the Reticent declares, casting his eyes in Margo's direction, clearly in the hopes of garnering support. Margo shrugs and does her best to keep a straight face. "Just... pretend you're a little black rain cloud," she advises sweetly.

"My lady?"

Margo bites on the inside of her cheek to keep the giggles muzzled. She notes that the old man's eyes sparkle with amusement, but he offers no commentary. Instead, he dispatches them to collect an assortment of plants from the hillside. Margo is tasked with harvesting a short, herbaceous creeper that she decides might be in the salvia genus — a kind of sage, but with a minty undertone. Goran, some thirty feet upwind from the apiary, busies himself with a large clay box outfitted with a set of impressive bellows.

Once the bee smoker is operational, Goran flicks his wrist, and a barrier spell flares to life around him.

"You. Sit here. Wait." He lifts the wooden box where little glass vials are cradled in their dedicated nests of hay and proceeds towards the now much more somnolent swarm.

Miraculously, no one gets stung. Goran hands off the crate of bottled bees to Sera and sends Ser Asshat to shovel gravel at the back of the house. "Heh. Nice young man," he comments, watching the knight retreat towards his new task. "Need relax. Make bees nervous. Like big steam pot. Huff, huff. Blow off some, maybe not explode. Shoveling good for that." Goran squints at Margo with a sly expression. "Hmm. Or. Maybe you help. Nicer than shoveling, most time. Good deed?" He wags a set of white bushy eyebrows at her.

"Won't be left unpunished," Margo retorts. That gets her a dry cackle.

During their next water break, Goran goes off to rummage in his house and returns with a jar of salve and a journal bound with some type of tree bark. "Bee glue toothpaste. Never toothache after that, no no. Old recipe. More recipes in book. Want?" He thrusts the salve and journal in Margo's direction.

"Want," Margo nods emphatically.

"Wrote all down first. Easier now. Just put in dream, yes? Know that trick?"

Margo receives the gifts with profuse thanks. "Do you mean that you can store information in your dreams?" she asks. Now, that would certainly be a useful ability. She wouldn't have to lug all the books around.

Instead of an answer, Goran pats her on the head with his hand, gnarled and dry like an old tree branch.

"Such nice nested doll. Likes bees, bees like. Asks good questions. Listens to old Goran. Sure not stay? Big help." Margo offers a friendly smile and a shrug. Goran gestures at her to follow, and she trails after him to the little garden. He points his chin at the red flowers Margo had spotted the night before. "Weed a little, hmm? Embrium. Healing. Very good," he comments, then busies himself with watering the carrots.

Margo scrutinizes the "embrium." She'd bet good money that it's a type of orchid. She's only seen it in dried form — the live plant is large, with meaty leaves and flowers that seem to glow on their own, but the effect is due to a cloud of pollen that surrounds the bloom, the small particles reflecting the light. Probably in order to lure whatever local pollinator might find such a thing appealing. After a brief hesitation, she plucks something that looks like wood sorrel from the feet of the plant and pops the clover-like leaf into her mouth. Judging by the sour taste, it is exactly what she thought it was. Interesting. Another convergence? Or... an import?

"Goran? Where are you from?" Margo asks, her tone casual.

The old man pauses in his watering and pivots to her slowly, his movements suddenly utterly alien.

"Know much, grow old fast, yes?"

Margo stills. Her fingertips, still brushing against the tender leaves of the sorrel, tingle with sudden fear. The saying is entirely familiar — something that Baba used to throw at them irritably when, as small children, Margo and Jake asked too many whys.

"What if I'm willing to take the risk?" she tries, but the utterance comes out with an unpleasant warble.

Goran the Deathless shakes his head once. "No. This, not free. Honey. Pickles. Bee glue. Free. Name, first time, free. Stew, roof over head. Always free. Place knowledge? Heh. Place knowledge never free. Know place, know dream, know root, yes? Too dear for you. Not have trade for it. Yet."

"What might you want as a trade?" Margo asks quietly. Because, for a brief, vertiginous moment, she can almost intuit the monumental contours of some formidable cosmic mechanism, a deep, unfathomable thing hidden beneath the apparent randomness and impossibilities of her circumstances. And, for that short, awful instant, no price is too high to pay for such knowledge.

Goran straightens and beams at her with the full radiance of his many wrinkles.

"Nice nested doll. Know not what asks. Broken? Then come. Tend bees. Weed garden. Heal, maybe. Until? Big changes. Work. Later, Goran here. Door open."

And with that, the old man returns to his carrots and says little else.

It is close to dusk when they leave Goran's hut, with the prototypes of the bee grenade distributed among them. Margo peers through the glass of her bee vial. The insects are puttering about drowsily. "No worry." Goran had said. "Wake up when matter. Now. Want more? Send nice people. Trade for it."

They camp in a rocky canyon a two-day journey from Haven. Margo sits by Sera near the campfire, while Lancelot the Useful volunteers to bring up water for cooking from a nearby stream.

"Shite. Don't like this," Sera mutters over another fletching job.

"What don't you like?"

"Three days, and nothing from the 'Quisition. Last thing was from Leli, yeah? 'Come back at once,' and that's friggin' it. Sent a note to Varric, nothing. Beardie, too. Nothing. I've got a shite feeling about this."

Margo shivers, and inches closer to the fire. The higher altitude has turned the nights much brisker than in Goran's sheltered valley.

"Maybe the ravens are having a gathering again?"

Sera shakes her head. "Nah. Saw them go back and forth earlier." 

"Anything you can get from the Jennies?"

"Too risky. Haven's small, yeah? Everyone's up each other's arses. 'Cept Leli. Leli's up everyone's arse."

The conversation is cut short by de Chevin's return, and they make dinner, a weirdly quiet mood settling over them.

Margo takes first watch and spends it in an anxious, fidgety wait.

It takes her a long time to fall asleep. Once she does, the embankment snaps into focus with eerie ease. As if in compensation for the chill of her waking reality, the weather of the dreamscape has taken a distinct turn for the warm and muggy. Margo walks quickly to the house, recites her summoning mantra before the damn hut tries to waddle off into the sunset, and enters.

She is entirely unsurprised to find its hypothetical host, once again, in absentia. Baba, it would seem, only shows up when she feels like it.

Margo rubs her face with both hands. If she is going to do this, she'd rather be in the open, so to speak. The hut is hot, the air stuffy with old botanical dust. She'd kill for lighter clothing. A dress, maybe.

As it turns out, the little house is in the business of wish fulfillment. Margo plucks the new garment from the back of a chair — once her eyes land on it, she has the creepy feeling that the simple summer dress has been hanging there all along, just waiting to be noticed. The fabric is a lovely but faded crepe de chine, a shade that's trying to decide between blue and light gray. The dress turns out to be a little loose on her — made for a human frame, she guesses. Even here, her avatar remains stubbornly elven. She hasn't thought about what this might mean.

A thing to ponder for another time. When she isn't about to do something stupid.

Margo walks to the river and sits on a large gnarled root, letting her bare feet sink into the gently swirling eddies of the current. She watches the water. At length, her mind drifts across the misty surface, the perpetual dusk of her dreamscape slowly softening the ragged edges of her thoughts. She is reasonably sure she could summon Baba. But it's an untested proposition. And the risk of receiving the wrong visitor feels like too big of a gamble.

That leaves her with the other, no less dubious, option.

"Solas," Margo says quietly. And waits. Somewhere in the distance, on the other bank, a crow cries. A frog leaps onto a boulder by her feet, then plops back into the water.

"Hello."

Margo startles at the proximity of the sound and turns her head. The elf is sitting next to her, a bit up-root, his back propped against the rough silvery bark of the willow's trunk. His bare toes almost touch her hip. His only reaction to seeing her is an audible inhale, and even that response is quickly smothered under a quiet smile. Then he notices their surroundings, and his eyes widen. "Lethallan, what is this place? It is... remarkable."

Margo shrugs, and turns back towards the water. It is somehow easier that way. "What makes it remarkable to you? If it's the chicken legs, then that wasn't my direct doing."

"The chicken...? Oh, I see." Behind her, she hears a short, surprised laugh. "Well, that is most certainly... unusual. But no, I was not commenting on your choice of architecture. It is the lushness. Most people's dreams engage only a single sense — typically, sight. From what I have seen of yours before, they tend to appeal to several senses. But this is beyond that. The scent of grass, the flowers, the gentle breeze. The heat! The sounds are some kind of insect? Bird?"

"Cicadas," Margo nods. "This isn't quite a dream, Solas. More of a memory. Maybe that's the difference."

She still doesn't turn to look at him, though she can feel his movements at her back. There is a soft splash. Solas wades through the shallow water with an expression of slightly indignant perplexity.

"This river mud is exceptionally..." he fishes for an epithet and appears to come up short.

"Squishy?" Margo supplies helpfully.

The elf's lips quirk. "I was about to suggest 'yielding,' but 'squishy' does capture the phenomenon."

He comes to stand in front of her, and, for a sharp, dizzying moment, Margo is struck by how strange he looks, how profoundly alien to this banal but heartachingly familiar pocket of her memory. Then the breeze sways the curtain of willow branches around them, sending a small, elongated leaf to flutter past his ear. It lands in the water and is swept away by the current. And just like that, Solas snaps into place, as if he had always been there.

"Fenor, this space, it is profoundly intimate to you, is it not?"

Margo nods once. "Roots of my roots."

A frown creases his brow, and he cocks his head as if straining to hear a sound just beyond the edge of perception.

"Ah. So this is where you come to avoid Imshael. I would not have known to even look for such a place. It is no wonder I could not locate you at all."

"Amund told me to create a sanctuary." Margo pulls her feet out of the water and hugs her knees to her chest, careful to let the skirt of her dress tent over her legs. She widens the root a bit to make her perch less precarious. Solas, she notes, tracks her manipulations with narrow-eyed attention. "This place is... well, it is close to my heart, yes. But it is also a kind of non-place, if that makes sense." She lets her chin rest on her knees. "Most of those for whom it mattered are gone. It offers little by way of collective memory. It has the advantage of not capturing anyone's imagination. If I understand how the Fade works in this regard, it is unlikely that someone extraneous would wander in by accident."

"I... see." Solas's eyes drift over the landscape with a look of sudden, poignant bereavement.

"Solas, indulge me in a chat, would you? Do we have the time?"

The elf glides back to the root and perches next to Margo, his shoulder brushing against hers. "Of course. This is still the Fade, fenor. Time is of little consequence here. Though we should conserve a few moments for... logistical matters, but this is a problem of attention rather than time elapsed. You should know what is happening in Haven, and I would have you tell me about Redcliffe, if you are willing. What do you wish to talk about?"

Margo releases her breath slowly, and fixes her eyes on the crisp outline of the purple mountains at the horizon.

"Settle something for me. The rifts in this thing you call the Veil pull spirits into the physical world, but alter them in the process. Is this correct?"

Next to her, Solas nods. "Yes. When thrust against its will into the Waking, a spirit becomes twisted, driven mad. Its purpose is corrupted, and thus, no longer able to know itself, it lashes out in senseless fury."

"Is this the only way in which spirits can cross?"

There is a long pause.

"It is not. Some spirits are enslaved by mages, summoned to serve the petty needs of mortals. Others are curious. Or lonely. Or any other number of reasons that might propel them to seek experiences with the material world. Sometimes they possess physical beings, welding their own essence to their hosts. The Chantry calls such things abominations, although the range of these relationships is more complex than that." Out of the corner of her eye, Margo notices that Solas shifts, uncomfortable. She widens the root under him into an approximation of a seat. "Ah. Thank you, fenor. It appears that this place responds only to you. But why this line of questioning?"

Well. This is it. Margo closes her eyes, letting her mind relax around the series of discursive moves she will need to execute to get the answers she wants.

"I find myself struck by the catastrophic scale of the Breach," she says quietly, "and yet only one side of it seems to be on everyone's mind. In Thedas, at least this part of it, Chantry doctrine seems remarkably good at refusing to consider the possibility that spirits are persons." She pauses, contemplating her next words. "You see, it was sort of the opposite in my world. Many of our older traditions tend to personify very generously. Everything is a potential person, endowed with intent. Animals, plants. Places. Spirits, of course."

"Your world had spirits?" Solas asks, surprise and a hopeful sort of curiosity in his voice.

Margo shrugs. "A matter of epistemological disagreement, as I may have mentioned. We do not encounter them as you do. But, historically, many of our cultures assumed they were there, quietly walking among us. Our myths are full of stories about these sorts of entities. We tell them to our kids, until it's time for them to grow up and find out that none of it exists. We recast it as 'metaphor.'"

Margo startles, because, suddenly, she feels the soft brush of a finger along her cheekbone, the touch light as a feather.

"You are saddened, fenor."

Her eyes dart to the elf. "Ambivalently nostalgic."

"I would enjoy hearing more of your world's mythology when the mood strikes you, if it would help."

Margo nods. "I'll be happy to share whatever I remember next time there is a quiet moment. I strongly suspect you might get a kick out of the Greeks in particular. And maybe you can catch me up to speed on your world's creation myths. I still don't quite understand what darkspawn are. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to discuss, at least not for the moment. Closing the Breach won't just save physical beings, it will safeguard spirits as well, will it not?"

Solas gives her a long, inscrutable look. Margo notes that he is almost too still.

"Not many would care about such things," he says finally.

"I do not have the ideological or religious commitments that would prevent me from trying to account for all the potential casualties," Margo shrugs. "It is no merit of my own, simply the benefit of profound difference." She exhales. "You mentioned that spirits die, in a way. Once they are pulled through and twisted from their purpose, is that a kind of death?"

Solas nods. "If one thinks of death as the dissolution of the experience of being oneself. Yes. Certainly."

Margo draws a steadying breath. "But the outcome is not always negative, is it? By all evidence gathered, you seem to be fine." She lets her eyes drift to the sky above the mountains and keeps her tone conversational. "If I were to hypothesize, I would say there are three possible explanations for why that might be: you came through before whatever cataclysm caused the Breach; you were not pulled here against your will; or you are, like me, possessing a preexisting body, and this somehow serves to prevent nefarious alterations to your essence. Or perhaps a combination."

The silence that follows is deafening. Even the cicadas grow quiet.

"What are you saying, lethallan?"

Margo turns. Solas's face reminds her of a mortuary mask in its absolute, deathly fixity. And yet, underneath the placid surface, storms roil.

"I think you are, initially, a spirit," Margo says. "Or something like it. One that, somehow, has become embodied."

For an eternity, Solas says nothing. His eyes search her face, and then roam over the dreamscape. Immobile as he is, there is something of the caged animal in his motionless tension.

"And why would you believe that such a thing is even possible?"

"Why not? I told you, from the perspective of the collective history of my people, this is a common concept. Our worlds could not be further apart in some ways, and yet I would be a shitty historian to ignore the convergences. Besides, I know something connects my world to yours, aside from the apparent transfer of botanical information. And, from there, if magic is real, if spirits are real — somewhere, somehow — then, as an intellectual exercise, I could consider the mythologies of my people as more than allegories. From such stories, 'spirits,' or whatever you want to call non-physical persons, used to cross over all the time." Margo looks up at the elf. There is a strange, banked intensity beneath the perfect stillness of Solas's face, but his eyes lock with hers, and Margo forces herself to look back at the water before she loses her train of thought or her determination to see this through. "According to our stories — our collective memories, if you will — spirits walked among us. Alternated between our skin and theirs. Shared our food. Fought with us. Sometimes tricked us, sometimes helped us. Sought to mate with us, of course — because why wouldn't they want to? We have a pretty high opinion of ourselves in that regard." Margo casts Solas a sly look and winks. It's subtle, but for a second he seems utterly scandalized, and then his cheeks color ever so slightly. "Anyway. You asked about why I think such a thing is possible, though I'm sure you didn't bargain for this particular intellectual tangent."

"Do not be so certain of that, fenor." His voice takes on a strange, velvety quality, a sharp edge hidden beneath. "Although you are correct that I would not 'bargain' over your intellectual tangents. But I am curious about something, if you do not mind. You speak of this as if it is in the past. Did your world change in some manner?"

Margo shakes her head. "I don't know. Again, this is just a conceptual exercise, intended to explain how I came to entertain the idea. But if you want me to run with it..."

"By all means."

"The obvious difference is that we do not have the Fade. Although, if you dig deeper into folklore and some religious practices, it's possible to come across a similar notion. But what we definitely don't have is the Veil. In some senses, it's the Veil that makes the Fade into its own separate entity, isn't it? So that might have something to do with it. Although I don't quite understand what the Veil is , so I suppose this is blind speculation."

Solas remains quiet for a long time. "I doubt this is the reason," he says finally. "But it is a fascinating question nonetheless. What would have happened over time had the Veil not been created to enact the separation?" She can't quite read his tone. "But why would you think that I, specifically, might be a spirit?"

Margo shrugs. "I could walk you through my reasoning step by step — the discrepancies between your demeanor and your alleged background, your apparent love for the Fade, the way you talk about spirits in such different terms... But mostly, it's the trick where you taught me to recognize you, and your explanation of it. I'm just curious whether it was an intentional or an accidental revelation, based on the fact that I lacked the background knowledge to connect the dots. Either way, it's exhausting to always pretend you're something you're not." She smiles, without much humor. "Speaking from personal experience, I could hardly blame you for slipping up."

Solas turns to face her, and Margo forces herself not to recoil. There is, once again, that otherness to him, like a statue of some ancient demiurge carved of an arcane mineral, poised in waiting to become animate and wreak havoc.

"If you think me a spirit, fenor, why invite me here?" he asks slowly, his tone too casual. "Has your experience with spirits been so positive? If your suspicions proved correct, would such a gesture not be terribly naive?"

"I was trained not to generalize too readily. Just because Imshael is a bastard doesn't mean all spirits are."

"There must be more to it than that." He peers at her, as if he is trying to pluck the thoughts hidden within. "Perhaps... If I were a spirit, what better demonstration of trust than an invitation to a space to which I would have no access otherwise? And thus, what better way to establish a social obligation of reciprocity. No less binding than if you had used a rope. I could hardly lie to you here. Was this your reasoning?"

Margo swallows, sudden fear prickling her spine. She knew going into it that she was gambling, so no point in crying foul at this stage. She glances at the elf's face but can't read his expression at all, beyond the barely contained intensity — though whether it is anger or something else she cannot tell.

Solas turns away, his face in profile all sharp angles. "Perhaps the Avvar's moniker for you is not as much of an oddity as I originally thought. Little spider indeed."

For a terrifying moment Margo wonders what would happen if she died in the Fade. Does the physical body die as well? Is it like brain death? Would she have time to wake herself up? She frowns and stares at the water, her jaw clenched. When she is finally able to speak, her voice is surprisingly steady. "I don't believe you have ever actively lied to me , Solas . What's more, you have offered your help and guidance without, seemingly, any strings attached. And you have kept my secrets. I already owe you a social obligation of reciprocity, and the trust is given freely, based on your actions towards me, and not on some kind of abstract ontological metric of what you might or might not be. But I don't do well with discrepancies once I notice them. I have the sort of mind that will keep worrying at them, like a dog with a bone. I am unlikely to let this go." She doesn't bother trying to hide the sudden flare of anger. "If you want to interpret this as a cynical attempt at a power play, that's your prerogative. If you decide that this is something you're willing to kill over, that's your prerogative. My goal is not entrapment, if that is what you're concerned about."

Solas huffs a short laugh. "Indeed not. You are far too subtle for that."

"Not a compliment, I suspect."

"Ah, but you would be so very wrong." The quiet words send another shiver down her back — although, this time, not one of fear.

"Is my hypothesis correct?" Margo asks quickly. She might as well push this and see how far it will go. She's come this far. The dreamscape stills, as if holding its breath. Even the river current slows to something sluggish and viscous.

"I fear the answer is not so simple," Solas says after a long silence. Margo expects his tone to retain that hidden, jagged edge, but the words, when they come out, are simply sad.

When the elf says nothing else, Margo sighs quietly. "I suppose it rarely is." Well. She didn't exactly expect him to fess up. She ponders the new sense of distance between them, the strange, tense, frightening sharpness of it. In the grand scheme of things, better this than a mountain of bullshit. She lets her toes dip back into the water. Solas would likely not be able to access this particular dreamscape without an explicitly renewed invitation, if it came down to that. All right. She can do this. Don't cut off the cat's tail one itty bit at a time, as Baba liked to say.

"Solas, I would not wish to be with you under false pretenses. It would be a terrible idea, for both of us."

She hears a soft inhale, barely audible.

"And under what pretenses would you wish to be with me, ma'nas?"

Margo frowns. Something about his utterance catches her ear — but not the grammatical inversion, or the sudden reappearance of the old endearment. The stresses seem to have landed in the wrong places, and there is a bizarre little hesitation after "with."

"I didn't mean..." she groans, stuck at that uncomfortable halfway point between sudden embarrassment and irritation. "I don't mean it as a euphemism for sex, in case that's what you think I'm saying. And I'm not using it as a bargaining chip. Or anything else. Not bargaining. Ugh..." Margo rubs her face with her hands, trying to will the blush away. Oh, but this is mortifying.

"If it reassures, sex is not where my mind went at first, fenor." By the sound of it, he is speaking around a suppressed smile.

"What I meant is that, whatever our association, I am very likely to keep asking you questions you might not be pleased to answer."

After what feels like an eternity, Solas surprises her by reaching for her hand. "May I?" he asks quietly.

Margo nods. His fingers lace through hers easily — a familiar, practiced pattern. His skin is oddly warm.

"I... Forgive me, fenor. My reaction was... unbecoming. But I cannot offer you a satisfying explanation now. And I will not lie to you. Would you accept the promise of a later conversation?"

Margo chuckles. "In some abstract and indefinite future?"

The pause stretches.

"No. Let us say, after the Breach is closed. If we both survive until then."

She ponders this, and, at length, nods. "A formal promise. To answer my questions, truthfully. Once the Breach is closed."

"Very well." The elf's fingers tighten around hers. "Consider the promise given."

They sit quietly for a moment. In the distance, something howls.

"You appear to have finally warmed up," Margo suddenly notes with a puzzled frown at their interlaced digits. She looks at the elf then, and is met with the ghost of a familiar, cheeky smile.

"You keep this place quite hot. It is a pleasant change from my current circumstances. Which brings me to an unrelated question. This dress... is it something you would have worn in your world?"

Margo frowns. "It is a little big on me these days. It would have been shorter normally." She looks at Solas. His eyes dart up to meet hers awfully quickly. "I'm not entirely sure how to control the temperature — without the lichen, the dreaming seems to have a mind of its own. But if you're overheating, feel free to go for a swim. Just," she motions upriver, "don't go that way. There used to be a sinkhole about fifteen yards from the shore. Not enough force to drown a good swimmer, but it'd give you a scare. Oh, and if there are long-haired ladies in the water with disproportionately large eyes telling you that they would like to tickle you, I strongly recommend not engaging."

She expects some sort of clever repartee, but instead, Solas gives her a long, strange look.

"I will admit, it is a tempting offer. Long-haired ladies and whirlpools notwithstanding, I would enjoy seeing how you have animated the river beneath the surface. It makes for a rather complex problem." He hesitates. "Would you truly not object?"

Margo laughs and gestures towards the water. "Be my guest. Take a dip. And let me know what you find out, I'm curious about this too, and I haven't had a chance to test it yet."

Another very odd look. Eventually, Solas turns his back to her, hesitates, and then pulls off his nondescript sweater in one quick, fluid movement. He tosses it on the root. Margo begins to turn her head to give him some privacy, but her eyes snag on his skin — and, to be fair, it isn't just the bold, graceful lines of his shoulders and back tapering to narrow hips that capture her attention, though there is some of that as well. It's the scars. And not just that there are far too many of them for a cautious mage recluse: another confirmation that his story is at least partially fictive. This is someone who has seen his share of battle — over a number of years. But what rivets her gaze is the odd tracings — faint, silvery etchings that snake down from the nape, along the spine, and down to the lower back in a geometric pattern that she can't quite tear her eyes from. The scars are not entirely even — more pronounced in some areas, almost invisible in others. As if leftovers of something else, removed.

Margo frowns. Even when they traveled together, she never saw Solas bathe alongside her other companions — or get undressed in public. She always assumed that it was because relying on the built-in dry-cleaning spell made it unnecessary. It never occurred to her that there might be other reasons.

If he realizes she is watching, he gives no sign of it. He rolls up his trousers to just below the knee and glides across the shallows to where the riverbed dips abruptly. And, before Margo can puzzle out the meaning of his markings, he is off, crossing the placid surface in long, easy strokes.

For the next few minutes, Margo busies herself with the problem of trying to materialize a towel, some kind of atavistic hospitality reflex kicking in. The dream does not cooperate. All she manages is a dishrag of questionable quality.

She is so thoroughly absorbed in her task that when something cold and wet brushes her shoulder, Margo almost tumbles down from her perch. Solas steadies her with one hand at her back. Somehow, he snuck up.

"Ugh, you are cold as a frog!"

The elf's expression vacillates between scandalized and amused, then settles on the latter. "A frog, hmm? I have been compared to worse things. Just, please, fenor, while we do not fully understand the exact mechanism of this dream of yours, strive not to turn me into one." He rests his forearms on the root next to Margo and looks up at her. "It is fascinating. There are two currents that you are replicating — one above, and one at a greater depth. It is what gives the river its texture. I was expecting an illusion, the mere imitation of movement, but the two currents are, in fact, of different temperatures."

"I most definitely do not have the attention span, nor the necessary knowledge of physics, to model such a thing consciously," Margo retorts, scowling at the damn towel. She passes it to Solas. "Here. Best I could do. I told you, this place has its own mind."

"However you are doing it, I am grateful. This is a most welcome and unexpected reprieve."

Solas straightens and takes the dish rag from her. If he has an opinion on the subject of the offending textile, it doesn't show. He is mere inches away now, but his back is once again to the river. There are scars on this side too, but fewer and fainter, and none of them exhibit that ornamental quality. Margo narrows her eyes. Solas, she is pretty sure, does very few things unintentionally. She'd bet good money he had meant for her to see them.

"Does the pretty pattern have a story?" Margo asks, with a tilt of her chin towards his back.

"Ah. You can see it. I suspected that might be the case." He pauses, contemplating something. "Everything has a story, fenor. Frequently more than one, and most of them wrong."

Margo laughs despite herself. "Spoken like a historian."

Solas hangs the rag on the root and glides to stand in front of her. His expression is impish.

Margo squints at him. "I have the overwhelming suspicion you're about to do something reprehensible."

His hands settle on her knees.

"May I," he asks, eyes fixed on hers. There's heat in his gaze, but also a very suspiciously wicked sort of amusement.

"May you what, exactly? What are you up to?" Margo squeaks.

"Testing the waters."

Before she can process this questionable statement, he pushes her knees apart and takes a step forward, his body suddenly flush against hers. To avoid tumbling off her perch, Margo instinctively hooks her legs around his hips. Solas leans in, his lips at her ear. She swallows. This is new. A whole lot of skin. She's not entirely sure what to do with her hands. Where should she start? "Here, allow me to demonstrate," he whispers and traces the sensitive shell of her ear with his tongue. Margo shudders violently. His hands travel slowly along her thighs, pushing up the fabric of her dress, trail over her hips, and then settle on her ass — and then, to Margo's outraged, if belated, realization and irate " Don't even think about it ," Solas lifts her easily, takes a few steps backwards towards the deeper part of the river bed, and dunks them both into the current. It's bracingly cold. Margo curses a foul streak, desperately wishing for the water to be the temperature of a warm bath, and then gapes at the elf, who, by this point, is sporting an expression of such obnoxious self-satisfaction she actually attempts to kick him under the water. Entirely ineffectually, of course, since she is still tangled around him and held in place by a rather unapologetically firm grip.

"I am not a scientific instrument, fenor ! Keep at it, and you'll be hopping home."

"It would appear that my theory has proven correct. This pocket of the Fade responds to your desires, not to your directed thoughts. Interesting, is it not?"

Margo growls. "Shall we test it? I do wonder whether amphibian life will suit your complexion, Solas."

"I am reasonably certain I am immune, but let us experiment. Focus your attention on me, and wish something. Let us see what the effects might be."

Margo scowls, but she puts her arms around his neck in case he decides to let go and the current drags her downstream. Oh, she can see this one coming from a mile away. The accursed elf approaches flirting in the same way one might a game of chess.

It is her dream. She'll be damned if she lets him have the last word on this one. Margo closes her eyes and tries to concentrate. It proves to be a mistake.

"Stop that, it's cheating," she gasps.

"Oh? Perhaps your wishing was too vague. Strive for something more specific."

"What you are doing with your fingers would certainly qualify as specific, you arrogant ass," Margo sputters. She feels more than hears his quiet chortle, and tries, entirely ineffectually, to at least get them to the shore. The dream does not comply.

It's probably the annoyance of knowing she will likely get outmaneuvered — or, rather, the flustered feeling of being unreasonably fine with that — but, on impulse, Margo adopts a different strategy. She stretches with her mind not into her own dream, but into his. The feeling is akin to what happens when one tries to open one's eyes while still in sleep paralysis. For a split second, before she is pushed like a cork out of water, she glimpses dark grey stone and the dim light of a dying torch and hears the faint echo of someone's muffled crying. There are footsteps bouncing off the stones in the distance.

Solas tenses against her, utterly still now. She looks at him in horror, because, of course, the gray walls are familiar.

"Solas? What in the Void are you doing in Torquemada's dungeons?"

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by propolis, the mixture of bee saliva and beeswax, which, traditionally, has been used as both a medicinal substance and as a musical instrument varnish._

 _The title of the chapter is a nod to Jack Kerouac._

 _Next up: More of what's been happening in Haven._


	51. Chapter 51: Clouded Minds

_In which Margo learns about the mess in Haven_

* * *

The shock of revelation — shared, Margo realizes, only incompletely, since its causes are distinct for each of them — has a sobering effect. She is the one to recover first: by the time she manages to disentangle herself and grips Solas by the wrist — the better to drag him ashore — he is still staring at her with a quizzical, worried, impatient frown.

"You are, as ever, full of surprises," he finally states, but he no longer resists her tugging and wades after her willingly enough.

"How is it that I can see your waking reality through your dream?" Margo asks once they make it to the embankment.

"In the same manner, I presume, that you can reach into my dream in the first place. The rest is simply training on my part. One learns to sleep with one eye open."

"Training, or natural talent?" For all she knows, the elf — or whatever he is, since the issue remains unsettled — is capable of unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. Like dolphins.

He doesn't offer an answer.

After the tepid water, the air feels unpleasantly brisk. The wet dress clings to Margo's skin, and no amount of wishing seems to remedy the problem. When they level with their previous arboreal perch, Solas retrieves his sweater, but instead of pulling it on he throws it over her shoulders.

"You seem cold, fenor. Until you find a way to conjure dryer clothing."

Margo casts him a grateful look. There is a little mischievous sparkle in his eyes, but it is quickly reset to neutral.

A few yards away from the chicken-legged architectural chimera, Margo whispers her hut-taming spell. The habitation shuffles from foot to foot but otherwise remains in place. She ascends the three rickety steps, her visitor in tow.

The space has rearranged itself: apparently, the hut decided to jettison the normal laws of physics in favor of a more spacious arrangement. Not only is the inside now distinctly larger than the outside, but the house has also availed itself of a functioning clay stove, a sturdy table and two chairs with embroidered cushions, and, somewhat predictably considering its presumed owner, an oversized mortar and pestle, large enough to pound flour — or fly around in. It is tucked away as unobtrusively as such a device can manage into a far corner. A bed, a desk, and an empty bookshelf have joined the ranks. And, not to be forgotten, a giant cast-iron cauldron on the stove.

Margo is so busy gawking at the new surroundings that it takes a moment to register that her clothes are dry.

"If I were to venture a theory, I would guess that this place is the dream's focal point," Solas muses, passing a hand over the now much lighter fabric of his trousers. Margo hands him his sweater, which he dons quickly. She gestures towards the table.

"You should know about Haven," Solas offers as soon as they are seated.

Margo looks for a teakettle, recalls that her guest is insufferably picky in that department, and sheepishly petitions the hut for hot chocolate. When her attention is drawn back to the table, there are two clay cups of steaming, sweet-smelling liquid standing right at the center — by all appearances just waiting patiently to be noticed. She pushes one in Solas's direction. He frowns at the mug and takes a tentative sniff. Margo waits expectantly. A sudden, surprised smile tugs at the corners of his lips, and Margo represses a triumphant "aha!" into an even less dignified snort as soon as she identifies the expression as one of recognition. There might yet be hope for this world if it has the theobroma cacao tree, or equivalent. She pulls the other cup towards herself.

"Are you really in Leliana's dungeon?"

Solas nods, takes a sip, and sighs with something suspiciously close to satisfaction, and then his expression turns grave. He sets the mug down in front of him and wraps his fingers around it. "I am, although as a visitor, not as a resident. For now, at least."

Margo quirks an eyebrow. "What sort of visitor to a dungeon takes the time to nap?"

"One whose duties retain him there for extended periods of time."

She sighs. It's got to be Evie. That's the most logical explanation. "Who else is in there?"

Solas's eyes grow stormy. "Aside from the Herald, whose state is most certainly not improved by her new quarters, there are two more: Varric, and a young man whom you have not met. His name is Cole. Although his presence in the dungeon is more courtesy on his part than any actual success in keeping him locked away."

Shit. Not only did Torquemada go on an arrest spree — a turn of events that does not surprise Margo in the least — but she's got Varric. Varric, who has by his own admission been on the business end of both Torquemada's and the Seeker's pointed questions. If the history of authoritarian regimes teaches one anything, it is that repeated arrests are a risk factor for untimely death. Margo forces herself to focus, pushing the panic below the surface, where it can flail ineffectually without interfering with her thinking. What do Varric and Evie have in common?

The obvious conclusion might as well be painted across her forehead in capital letters, because Solas nods once in confirmation. "Cole sought to help the Herald in her fight against the Envy demon that overtook the templar commander. The consequences of his intervention were... unexpected."

Margo files away the existence of envy demons under the ever-expanding rubric of "inconceivable things to be dealt with at a later date" and forces her mind to focus on the more immediate problem. "I have a feeling that 'unexpected' is the understatement of the epoch. Leliana learned about Evie's past, didn't she?"

Solas takes another sip and leans back. His long fingers drum an impatient staccato rhythm against the coarse surface of the oak table. "In a manner of speaking. She remains astoundingly unconcerned about what exactly has been done to the child, though that is an aside. As I have mentioned, Cole sought to help the Herald. Cole is... unique. It is difficult to explain what he did to someone who is not adept in magic..."

Margo waves away his hedging with a quick gesture. "Try me."

"At your pleasure, fenor." He pauses, his eyes on her, a speculative expression on his face. Margo takes the opportunity to revisit her last words for any double entendre and promptly gives the elf the stink eye. It would seem that the colloquialism does not translate quite so innocently into whatever linguistic idiom he operates in. Solas resumes, entirely unperturbed, the ghost of a smile there, then gone. "All magic is derived from the Fade. I may have mentioned that the Herald's connection was practically nonexistent, though it appears that this is not the natural state of affairs, but rather the result of whatever has been done to her. Cole... Ah. Imagine a dam on a river..."

Margo nods vigorously before Solas has the chance to finish, allowing his metaphor to conjure another. "He did a bypass?"

Solas's expression is quizzical for a split second, but then it settles into understanding, and he inclines his head in confirmation.

"Precisely. He bypassed the blockage, creating a different route for the flow of magical energy."

"I'm sure that went over well."

"As well as you would expect. The Herald's magical propensities are as narrow as they are uncommon. The Circle mages the Inquisition has in its employ recoil from her in fear and incomprehension. The fact that her magic, however raw and wild, has likely saved the Templars and defeated Envy is beyond their capacity to grasp."

Margo pinches the bridge of her nose. "Slow down. Tell me the chronology. What actually happened, step by step?"

Solas taps his lips with his finger, then takes another sip of cocoa. "I fear this will be incomplete, fenor. I did not witness it myself. Cole's intervention revealed the Herald to be an untrained mage, but it must have destabilized the precarious balance between her latent powers, the mark, and what you so felicitously called the 'jinx vortex.' Upon their return from Therinfal, the Seeker, no doubt racked by guilt over her dissimulation, approached the other advisors with the revelation of the Herald's status, in the process inculpating Varric, you, and me as coconspirators. It could not have happened at a worse time. There is a Chantry delegation in Haven, lending support to local voices that would see the Inquisition disbanded and the Herald put on trial. The advisors scramble to play a game of appearances — one they will not win, I fear. Varric was taken to the dungeons that same night. I am for the time being simply followed by Leliana's people, and I was discouraged from attempting to leave. While my utility in keeping the Herald alive persists, I cannot be disposed of quite so quickly, I suppose. However, I can scarcely keep the power of the mark from killing her: whatever magic feeds the luck siphon interprets my efforts as hostile acts, causing constant bizarre mishaps."

With a truly spectacular effort, Margo manages to rearrange her expression into something more reasonable than stunned gaping. And then she bristles at the thrice-bedamned elf. "And when, pray tell, were you planning to tell me all of this?"

Solas has the decency to look mildly abashed. Until, that is, a bout of cheekiness purses his lips into a small, intimate smile. "I am certain the opportunity would have presented itself eventually. As I have mentioned, the Fade is a matter of sustained attention, rather than time." His expression turns serious. "But you are forgoing the question most relevant to your own wellbeing. I must retract the favor I requested of you in my letter. Do not, under any circumstances, return to Haven."

Margo wrinkles her nose in an expression of cosmic disgust. "Let me guess. Leliana will have me court-martialed."

Oh. Her eyes widen in realization. "Agh! You tricky..." She ends the abbreviated sentence on an inarticulate growl for lack of a more pithy insult. " That's why you were so forward. You figured you'd explain all this, and I'd stay away. Problem solved. Might as well have some fun!"

"I can always visit you in the Fade, if you allow it," Solas comments innocently. "Geographic distance need not be an impediment."

Margo springs from her chair, the anxiety propelling her into arbitrary movement. For lack of a better alternative, she begins to pace. "Leliana will find me anyway. There is the bigger problem. Can Evie still close the Breach?" She narrows her eyes suspiciously. This is the reason the sneaky bastard hinged his promise to answer her questions on that particular event, isn't it?

"If we are exceptionally lucky."

"Conniving ass. Fine. Why is Evie in the dungeon?"

Solas chuckles. "Mostly to appease collective fears. Among other things, it would seem that Lady Trevelyan is completely immune to the templars' efforts at suppressing her magic. It is quite remarkable, in fact — I believe she rather enjoys it. Her own words on the subject were that it 'clears her head.'"

Margo can't help the smirk. She casts Solas a quick look. Their eyes lock briefly, something sharp and strange passing between them. She isn't entirely certain she can identify the sentiment. An odd species of solidarity, recognizable despite its morphological distinction from its more familiar and easily domesticated brethren. "I have a feeling you're not altogether displeased with that particular turn of events," Margo ventures.

Solas quirks an eyebrow. "I can only imagine that this was quite the unpleasant surprise for the representatives of the Chantry. The Herald of Andraste, an untrained apostate, entirely immune to the purportedly holy power of the templar smite."

"Someone will have to engage in impressive theodicean acrobatics to explain that one," Margo grins, feeling vaguely vindicated on Evie's behalf.

The smile Solas offers in return is very private, with a trenchant edge beneath the softness. She quickly turns away to find something innocuous to look at — and does her best to ignore the sudden and rather inopportune aching sweetness blooming in her lower belly. When did she develop this thing for the iconoclastic types, anyway?

Her eyes fall on the mortar and pestle. Not helpful.

When her wits return, Margo turns around. "All right. You mentioned in your letter that you feared Evie could be made Tranquil at the hands of allies. You suspected she was a mage after all? Despite not seeing it in her originally?"

Solas nods with a pensive expression. "I had not noticed it before, because my focus was absorbed by the mark and its unstable magic. It is plainly evident from the Dreaming side. The oversight is mine: I had not looked hard enough."

"So how did this Cole manage to not only see it, but fix it?" Margo frowns. "Come to think of it, who is Cole, exactly?"

Solas leans forward and rests his chin on his folded fingers. "An excellent question, fenor." He pauses, a twinkle of amusement lighting up his eyes. "Cole is... a spirit. As to the reason behind the success of his intervention, I can only imagine that it is because of the kind of spirit he is. Or, perhaps, the result of the fact that his actions were carried out in the Fade."

Margo raises a finger and wags it for good measure. "Pause for a second. Cole is a spirit. Like you?"

She could swear she hears a soft chuckle, but it is hard to say for sure. Solas's expression remains impassive otherwise. "Not like me. As I have mentioned, Cole is quite unique."

Since it is abundantly clear that she will get absolutely nothing further from him on that particular subject, Margo changes strategies. "Fine. Interrupt me when I get this wrong." She begins to fold down her fingers as she enumerates. "Evie goes to fetch the Templars. There, she has a run in with the entity you called an Envy demon — did you say it had overtaken the Templar commander?" Solas nods. "Wonderful. Bad juju, I take it. So. Evie gets an assist from Cole — who is a spirit. While they are both in the Fade, Cole notices the obstruction of Evie's connection. He does not remove the obstruction itself, but creates some sort of bypass. So far so good?"

"As far as I have understood Cole's explanation."

"After that, Evie presumably wins Templar support — how did that happen, exactly?"

Solas shrugs. "My information on this subject is at best insufficient. To hear the others say it, she brought one of the templars' prominent lieutenants back to life with a wave of her hand while dispatching Envy back into the Fade with the other. The soldiers who witnessed it whisper that the demon's material form simply disintegrated in mid-movement."

Margo rubs her face, trying to will away the utter consternation. "Right. So we have a rift-closing, demon-dispatching, dead-templar-resurrecting, totally untrained mage immune to magic suppression whom the people are hailing as the embodied emissary of a locally popular prophet. No wonder the Chantry clerics have their knickers in a wad."

"Quite," Solas notes dryly. "Although I am not privy to the internal debates between the advisors and the Chantry delegation. Much of this is gleaned from local rumors and idle soldier chatter, and thus is undoubtedly distorted. It would appear that some of the more zealous members of the Chantry have raised the possibility of another Rite of Tranquility, and their voices resonate loudly, without much effective opposition. I suspect that the mage loyalists — Madame de Fer and those who have joined as part of her entourage — see in the Herald the living confirmation of their fundamental fear of magic. They advocate for rigorous control, but without the ability to wield templar powers against the Herald, their arguments damn her further by virtue of a weak defense."

"You have got to be kidding me," Margo grinds out. "Why is Tranquility even on the table? Shouldn't it be a last resort approach?"

"The Herald's magic — all of her magic, including that of the mark — has destabilized to a dangerous point. I suspect it is because it was always intertwined — that her survival of the explosion at the Conclave was intimately connected to the magic of the luck siphon. And that the mark itself was drawn and melded to the Herald because of her latent abilities." He pauses, his face turning grim. "Unfortunately, she has very little conscious control over any of it at the moment. Master Adan and I are keeping her sedated until I can find a way to at least quiet the mark."

Margo resumes her pacing. "If it is all melded together, then wouldn't making Evie Tranquil deaden her ability to close the rifts as well?"

"It is a very likely outcome, yes."

"So surely they won't do it? Evie is the only one who can close the Breach!"

"Do not underestimate the foolishness of the 'faithful' when they are threatened in their hold on power, fenor." She can read the banked anger well enough. "I mentioned this to the Spymaster, but I am not convinced that my argument was heard."

"Could it even be done? If both Tranquility and magic suppression are induced by lyrium, is it not possible that Evie might be immune to both?"

"I do not know for certain but would not wish to run the risk. If we cannot close the Breach permanently, the world is lost. The current seal is temporary, and it will not hold forever."

Margo throws up her hands in helpless frustration. "And if someone is actually seriously arguing in favor of this idiocy, should they not be concerned about what might happen if they try to Tranquilize a mage who has previously undergone something similar? And who has a new connection to the Fade — one that is the result of an artificial bypass of sorts? Conversely, why are they not worried about how the luck siphon will react to an attempt to sever her again?"

Solas shakes his head. "They do not see it, fenor."

Margo turns to him. "What do you mean 'they do not see it'? They do not see the risks?"

"The advisors do not appear to believe any of it: not the luck siphon, not the botched severance from the Fade. Even the Seeker is questioning her own experience. Commander Rutherford and the Spymaster are of one mind on this, but I suppose it is easier to imagine a conspiracy where the four of us concealed the Herald's magical abilities and strange immunity. The Chantry cleric, Roderick — you may not have had the displeasure — is calling for a public trial for the Herald and those involved, as well as for the Seeker's official demotion and exile. So far, only the Ambassador has evinced a flexible approach, and raised objections."

"Wait! What about the scar? Surely, that should be proof enough."

Solas sighs quietly. "Fenor, it would appear that no one except for you, Cole, and myself can see the scar. And the Herald is unable to testify on her own behalf. Even when she wakes, her thinking and speech are disordered and thus not listened to." His eyes go briefly out of focus. "Forgive me. I suspect I will be summoned shortly." Solas stands up. "Whatever happens, I want to thank you for this reprieve."

Margo covers the distance between them and grabs hold of his hand, as if that would prevent him from being wrenched from the dream.

"Solas, how do we solve this? There has to be a way."

He shakes his head. "I do not know that there is, but in either event, please keep away from Haven." He hesitates. And then, as if driven by an impulse that circumvents carefully built defenses, he gathers her into his arms and plants a soft kiss on her forehead. And in the next instant, he is gone, and Margo is grasping empty air.

She swears colorfully, closes her eyes, and wakes herself up. Above her, the stars are legion. Slowly, her wakeful mind reacquires some of the critical abilities dulled by the Dreaming.

Margo frowns. Scars. Invisible scars, no less. And what an unexpected "coincidence" that she just recently became acquainted with a set of equally arcane markings inexplicably visible to her.

And, scars aside, the other problem: what kind of mage is Evie, exactly?

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the theobroma cacao tree, which we can only hope exists across the multiverse._

 _As always, a million thanks for reading and leaving your thoughts._  
 _Next up: Returns, politics, and further revelations_


	52. Chapter 52: Eternal Returns

_In which Margo learns something new about her body's past, the team splinters, and we return to Haven._

* * *

"Walk me through this shite again, Spindly." Sera doodles with the tip of her arrow in the powdery red dirt.

Margo sighs quietly. Ever since she shared the basics of her new intel about the state of things in Haven, they've been dawdling, taking every opportunity to slow their progression through the Frostbacks. Sometimes, the pauses are pleasant. Taking an extra half an hour to warm their lunch rations as opposed to wolfing them down on the go is pleasant. Boiling tea from the more innocuous local flora that Margo now easily identifies and collects, almost on autopilot, is pleasant.

Picking a fight with every hostile-minded critter is less so, but it gives her the opportunity to test Molly in the field. De Chevin sticks to her like toilet paper to a shoe, watching her every move in battle with hawking attention, and — she'll give him this — providing a kind of safety buffer against her steadily decreasing blunders. Working with Molly has made things infinitely easier, especially when Margo manages to ignore the bloodthirsty head-chatter. The fact that the dagger might be semi-sentient is something Margo is not at all ready to examine.

She watches Ser Lancelot the Hygienically Minded clean the blood off his armor in a nearby stream, vapor billowing away from him in the brisk mountain air. He is far enough down the small south-facing ravine they have chosen as their resting spot that he would not overhear a quiet conversation. Margo has been circumspect with how much she reveals about the mess that awaits them. And she has been completely tight-lipped about Evie's exact status, or what she is beginning to suspect might be the nature of the young woman's magic. What de Chevin knows, Ishmael can find out. So her truncated story sounded rather unconvincing, but Ser Lancelot the Surprisingly Perceptive just gave her a long, heavy look, then let out an almost imperceptible sigh accompanied by a small nod. And didn't push the matter further or ask questions.

Margo looks at Sera — and at the two little vertical wrinkles that have set up camp between the archer's eyebrows. They're a new, unsettling development.

"All right. There's more to it." After she is done with the more expanded version of the story — the one that includes the inconvenient fact that Evie appears to be an untrained mage without much control over her abilities or state of mind — Sera stabs her arrow into the center of her abstract yet vaguely obscene sketch and lets out an exasperated growl.

"Shity shite. All right. Gotta ask. You know this because you talked to Elfy? In a dream ? You're sure it's true, then?"

Margo nods once and does not elaborate.

"Uh-huh." Sera's tone takes on a teasing edge, the more familiar affect a relief as far as Margo is concerned. A worried Sera makes her anxious. "I mean, you wanna let Old, Long, Bald, and Ugly poke around in... places — grand, have fun. No accounting for taste, yeah? But couldn't you just do it regular-like? Letting him into your head too, well, that's a bit too close, innit? Just sayin'."

Margo redirects the impulse to embark on the path of flustered denial and settles for a noncommittal shrug instead. "Sera, why do you dislike Solas so much?"

Sera retrieves the arrow and begins to smooth out her doodle with the tip of her boot. "Other than he's an arse, you mean? Guess... just the type he is."

"What type is that?"

Sera mulls over her answer. "The type that'd sell you out for some stupid cause. Feed you a fancypants apology for your trouble while he guts you, too."

Margo opens her mouth to protest. And then closes it. It's not that she thinks that Sera's right , per se. But... There is something there. The indefinable revolutionary edge, the iconoclasm. Hard to articulate what it is, exactly. She stares into the flames of their small campfire, thinking. It is strange to hear Sera indirectly confirm her own impression — and Margo would be a poor historian indeed if she didn't pay attention to the implications. It is a general affliction of the revolutionary type, this blindness to collateral damage that Sera describes. Can't have the charisma without the ruthlessness.

She changes the subject. "What do you want to do about Evie?" Margo uses the sleeve of her coat to grab the simmering travel pot off the fire and pours its contents into three tin mugs. She hands one to Sera. "We're going to stumble back into a political meat grinder, by the looks of it."

Sera shrugs. "Gotta pick your battles, yeah? Untrained mages — bad for morale, sure. Weird luck suck — really bad for morale. But I mean, magic — creepy shite by the by, right? See, that's why I like arrows. But it's Evie we're talking about. She glows . That's the main of it. None of the others glow, 's'far as I noticed. And she maybe cares a little — like cares cares, doesn't just give you that oily, squinty arse-purse face that all the hoity-toity nobs like to do when they want you to think they give a flying shite about the little people."

Margo huddles around her cup. Her eyes drift to the jagged dip of the mountain pass on the other side of the valley. One more range — a day-and-a-half journey if they really drag their feet — and they'll be able to see Haven.

"I guess she's safer in the dungeon than out in the town. Especially with all those Chantry folk and the templars running around," Margo muses. The silver lining feels thin indeed.

"Pillocks, the bunch," Sera summarizes. "See, this how it is, yeah? I didn't join the 'Quisition for the fancy title. Joined for the Herald. Rest can hold on to their arses and jump off a cliff for all I care. I'm not leaving her in there to get turned into one of those Tranquil. Ugh."

"We'd do well to have some kind of contingency plan. And we shouldn't drag de Chevin into it, either. It's not his mess." What Margo really wants to say is that if she traipses back into Haven, Torquemada will very likely kill her — and make the life of whoever is associated with her miserable. Whatever Margo might think of Ser Lancelot the Sometimes Irritatingly Pompous, she's not about to drag him into the classic power vacuum of the interregnum that seems to be gripping the Inquisition.

"We could bust Evie out! And sneak her away!" Sera's expression clears, and she bursts into one of her contagious belly laughs. "Can you imagine the look on Leli's face? Or Cullen and Josie for that matter"

Margo chuckles, but shakes her head. "Evie won't make it on her own. She needs the Inquisition, and the Inquisition needs her. She'll need the training, the resources, and someone to do the political maneuvering. And they need the Herald of Andraste. At least for now."

"You think like a politician, Spindly. Or a bard. Too friggin' serious for your own breeches, you lot." Sera looks up, and Margo is relieved to see her slightly wicked grin. "All right. Way I see it, we just need to get Evie back to normal, yeah? Then everything can go back to how it was, Evie can close the Breach, everyone calms down. Sitting in a dungeon — that won't make you feel normal, will it? So, first things. Let's send Knighty on his way — if we can unglue him from your heels, yeah? Gonna make sure we have a cache waiting for us outside of Haven, if we need to scarper. Then we go in, get Evie out, and get everything back to how it was."

Margo cocks an eyebrow. "I think your plan is maybe skipping a couple of steps."

"That's because plans never work out how they're supposed to," Sera shrugs. "What's the point of all that planning if it's all gonna go tits-up anyway? Not that I mind tits up. Just not for plans. Do plans have tits? They really should."

"That is a question best discussed with Warden Blackwall," Margo responds, a little distractedly. From where they sit, the Breach is plainly visible. It feels... restless, somehow, its swirling depths pulling her gaze. She forces herself to look away.

They set up their evening camp in a small cave near the mountain pass, after dispatching a few prowling necroslugs — or shades, as they are rather blandly labeled in the local parlance. By this point in their journey, they've fallen into a comfortable fighting rhythm. The sensation is unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. Ser Lancelot the Efficiently Murderous serves as their vanguard, Sera works from a distance, and Margo occupies the ecological niche of picking off the weakest links. By the second day, Sera managed to drag de Chevin into a competition over how many enemies each has killed, and she goads him until he bristles indignantly over the archer's rather liberal arithmetic. Margo tries to stay out of it but is called upon on occasion to be an impartial arbiter.

After they finish their simple dinner of goat meat charred over embers, Sera climbs into her bedroll, and it is not long before Margo can hear quiet snoring. De Chevin drew second shift for the second night in a row, so she expects him to go off to sleep as well — or rather, to stare at the cave ceiling in avoidance of the things that stalk him when he closes his eyes — but he lingers by the fire, sword and whetstone in hand. He seems to be approaching the task of sharpening his blade with none of his usual meticulousness. Margo casts him a puzzled look over her own routine chore of pulverizing elfroot for a fresh batch of healing potions.

Ser Lancelot the Burdened by Heavy Thoughts sighs and lifts his gaze from the long-suffering blade. "The offer remains, my lady. Come with me." When Margo doesn't respond, he chews on his lower lip in apparent indecision and, to give himself something to do, pokes the fire with a stick to vent the embers. The acrid smoke, equal measures craggy wood and dry goat dung, is sucked up a narrow chute in the ceiling — an unexpected convenience that makes Margo conclude that the cave is at least partially man-made. She waits for the knight to complete his utterance. "You are prudent to be sparing with your explanations. But I have played The Game for long enough to understand the political riptides that are threatening to tear your organization apart. I... Ah. Worry that such currents are not merciful to those caught in them."

Margo cocks her head, trying to untangle the complicated emotional response that Lancelot the Conflicted seems to have to her. Well. She might as well just cut to the chase and ask him directly. There might not be future occasions to do so, and maybe she will learn something relevant about Maile in the process. Something that might help her understand the other woman better.

"I have some questions, Ser Knight."

"Please. Just... Michel."

Margo nods, a bit reluctantly. "Michel." She sighs. Well, no time like the present. "I told you that I have lost my memory. If you want me to consider going with you, I need to know more. What's your relation to Imshael? And how do I fit into the story? If he uses me to torment you, then there must be a reason, and it would help me if I could understand what it is."

He says nothing for a long time. When he finally begins to talk, his words are hesitant. And then, at length, the story tumbles out of him, initially with audible omissions that Margo could easily identify even without the historian's habit of reading between the lines: the periodic light blush on his cheeks gives them away. As the narrative progresses, he gradually forgets to edit out the less flattering parts. Or perhaps decides not to.

She listens, fascinated. The tale of the knight's fall from grace is eye-opening on a number of subjects: Orlais and its politics; the status of the elves, both Dalish and those confined to alienages; the rigid hierarchies of her new world. And, incidentally, on bards. She learns of Empress Celene and Briala; of Gaspard de Chalons and his ambitions to gain the throne; of the Dalish clans and of the bloody massacres of city elves at the hands of the chevaliers. The story of the strange elven mage called Felassan catches her ear, sinking like an irritating little splinter into the back of her mind. The scholar in her shifts in giddy restlessness at the thought of learning more about the ancient elves and their culture, and of the historical and archaeological record they left behind.

As de Chevin stumbles down his narrative path, his face takes on a grim cast, and, with a jolt of sudden understanding, Margo finally identifies the defining tonality of the knight's affect. The central emotion that seems to power him is profound and utter self-loathing.

"It wasn't your fault, you know," Margo says once silence falls over them. "Imshael tricked you."

"That my releasing the demon was not intentional does not make me any less responsible."

When he finally arrives to the portion of his story that intersects with Maile's — delivered through clenched teeth and a painful blush — Margo feels neither surprise nor unease, just a kind of abstract, resigned understanding. By this point, de Chevin has reached the emotional nadir of his confession, the moment where the pretenses of making oneself look better are finally stripped away.

It is, in many ways, a familiar story — a man stumbling after his goal in blind self-recrimination, recklessly testing the limits of his exile and disgrace. He had, de Chevin explains, no business going to that part of Orlais, let alone into an alienage tavern. A woman caught his eye — or, rather, as Margo infers from his downcast, miserable expression, caught the edge of that irritable, angry lust that comes from a mixture of too much alcohol and too much self-hatred. The woman was in her element — laughing and joking, singing vaguely lewd and politically inappropriate chanties with a few of the other patrons. But there was a desperate note to her that, Margo guesses, must have snagged on the disgraced knight's own chaotic mood like a fishhook. Margo is inclined to take de Chevin's characterization of Maile at face value: she remembers the abrasive scrape of her host's jagged edges against her own consciousness from the reconstructed memories.

De Chevin, shamefaced and brutally candid, summarizes tersely how he propositioned her. And how, when she refused him with a laugh, he shoved money at her, in an effort to salvage his wounded pride and recast her rejection as pecuniary bargaining.

The denouement of the story is not quite what Margo expects. That evening, the tavern was raided by chevaliers, who, it turned out, were de Chevin's former order. In an odd twist of fate he found himself on the wrong end of his erstwhile colleagues' swords, and he fought them alongside the elven rogue he had insulted earlier. The two of them rescued the patrons caught in the crossfire, and, before reinforcements came, the elven woman helped him escape.

"Did we... What happened next?" Margo asks, on the edge of her metaphorical seat by then, because once de Chevin stops bothering with feeling mortified, he turns out to be an engaging if wryly self-deprecating narrator.

"I was wounded. You could have simply abandoned me to my fate — but you did not. We spent the next day hiding out in a larder — a fishmonger acquaintance of yours agreed to conceal us. To this day I feel rather conflicted over the smell of pickled fish. To pass the time, you told me about pursuing bardic training. And I, still set on my appallingly rude trajectory, told you that you would not survive it." He stares at his hands. "For what it is worth, I meant it as a warning, not as an insult. But no, we never... Ahem. As I said, you had sent me to the Void on that particular subject. Which was quite a bit more gracious of you than what I deserved. And by the time the drink wore off..."

"You thought better than to proposition again," Margo finishes for him with a sly grin.

He chuckles. "My lady, I am without a doubt a bastard, though I strive not to be that kind." His expression turns contrite. "This is how I knew your story of memory loss was true. You baited me then, about... Well, never mind. An ironically prescient quip, in retrospect. I wanted to see whether you would recall it if I gave you the occasion for it."

"I can only guess," Margo chuckles. "But you've come this far. Now I'm dying of curiosity."

A smile touches his lips. "If you must know, you told me that — I paraphrase — the sky would sooner open and rain down demons than I would find myself between your legs." He clears his throat, blushes to the roots of his hair, and focuses his attention on his boots.

A surprised laugh escapes her and bounces off the walls of the small cave in a cascade of echoes. Sera stirs and grumbles something unprintable. Margo quickly slams her hand over her mouth in an ineffectual attempt to stifle the peals of giggles.

"Well, then," she finally manages, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes and still shaking from suppressed laughter. "Accomplished on both fronts, if not quite in the expected manner."

Lancelot the Crimson looks like he is about to contribute something, but he just shakes his head, pinches the bridge of his nose, and shuts his eyes.

"Get some rest if you can," Margo finally suggests in an effort to help him out of his predicament. "You've got the worst shift."

"Will you think on my proposal? Returning to the Inquisition at this time would be unwise."

Margo shakes her head sadly. "I know. But I don't have much of a choice. I suspect you'd do the same if you were in my shoes."

"Why?" he frowns. "Is there... Is someone... ah... waiting for you?"

Margo frowns. "It's not that simple." Because, of course, it isn't. Solas's injunctions to steer clear of Haven notwithstanding, she is fairly certain that the elf knows perfectly well that she can't. Not after that little revelation with the scar and what that means. If she is one of the only people who might testify about Evie's state... Well. There isn't much of an alternative option. The only thing Margo would like to know is whether Solas showing off his own markings was a coincidence, a not-especially-subtle form of manipulation, or an intentional message of the doublespeak variety. Whichever way the chips fall, it changes nothing in the long run. She sighs, resigned. "If you thought there was something you could do to help — even if that something was really tiny — would you try? Despite the risks?"

The former knight stares at her for a long time, and says nothing. Eventually, he nods, seemingly to himself. "You have not changed, you know. Despite the memory loss. You are still the woman I remember. I am... glad of it."

And, with that disturbing announcement delivered, Ser Asshat gives Margo a formal bow and retires to his bedroll. She wiles away the rest of her watch finishing the potions and wakes him from his fretful sleep once the stick they use to keep time burns down to cinders.

Her dream takes her back to the embankment, but once there Margo keeps to herself.

"This is a good spot," Sera declares. Below them the cupola of Haven's chantry shines a soft pink in the oblique rays of the sun.

Margo hesitates, wondering what to take and what to leave behind. Molly, she decides, is coming with. In fact, the thought of abandoning the dagger fills her with an eerie, itchy sort of dread. And, besides, walking in unarmed would only raise suspicions. Upon reflection, she stashes some elfroot potions and two of her three alchemy formularies. She keeps Auntie's Compendium as a talisman in her coat pocket and Genitivi's magnum opus in her pack. After a brief moment of deliberation, she deposits her journal alongside their other belongings in the little crevice between the rocks, right behind the enormous sequoia look-alike that towers over the rest of the forest.

De Chevin left them that morning, after a long and frustrating argument. Sera had stalked off mid-sentence, abruptly out of patience, with a "gonna hunt" thrown over her shoulder. Margo gave her retreating back the evil eye. Eventually, after much circuitous debating, she succeeded in convincing Ser Lancelot the Uncooperative to return to his task of tracking down Mihris — the woman whom Imshael had possessed — but not before he extracted a promise from her to keep in contact through an acquaintance at the Crossroads. And then he gave Margo a long, unhappy look, grabbed her hand, slanted a rough, stubbly kiss across her knuckles, turned on his heels, and stomped off, bristling like a particularly ill-tempered porcupine. Even the creaking of his leathers sounded disapproving.

"Are we ready for this?" Margo asks Sera bleakly.

"What's the worst that can happen?" the archer quips with inappropriate cheerfulness.

"Leliana is probably going to arrest me on sight. Just so you know." Margo huddles into her coat. "You know the thing about dungeons? They really don't grow on you."

Sera sniggers, but then her face turns serious. "Got your back, don't worry. We'll find a way. I just gotta talk to Beardy. Others, too. See, the 'Quisition — it's like a layered cake, yeah? Anyway. Lets go fix this sorry mess."

Oh, hell on a stick, Margo thinks. How, precisely, are they going to do that?

They set off down the path side by side.

They are stopped at the gate by a familiar duo: Tweedledee and Tweedledum are clearly taking their duties as sentries with utmost seriousness, which is to say they are lounging on a set of crates and playing cards. At the sight of them, Margo groans under her breath, not least because she is almost glad to see them. Whatever else might be said about the two idiots, they have the merit of being known quantities.

"Oh, you!" One of the Tweedles — the marginally more intelligent one, who doesn't go by Merek — turns the full force of him smarmy grin in Margo's direction. "We got orders about you , don't we?"

"We sure do!" Tweedledum confirms. He pulls himself up to attention — or to an approximation of attention considering his perpetual slouch and prominent beer gut. "Proceed with us, please. And... uh, yeah! Surrender your weapons."

"I am not proceeding anywhere, and I am certainly not surrendering my weapons to either of you nugheads," Margo declares.

Sera nods. "Not leaving weapons without someone signing for them. Gonna do this procedure-like. You can take us to Quartermaster Thren's tent."

Tweedledee looks like he is about to protest, but Tweedledum interrupts him with an impatient wave of his hand.

"Don't matter. Quicker we're done with this, quicker we get back. Think we're gonna get a little extra for it? For capturing dangerous prisoners?"

"They can't very well be prisoners, you tit, they're not in prison. You mean fugitives."

"Don't they need to be 'fugiting' in order to be fugitives? Running away, that is?" Tweedledum frowns at the challenge presented by this taxonomic subtlety. "Way I see it, direction's all wrong," he adds philosophically.

"Oh, shut it, you gits," Sera snaps. "Just... Where are we supposed to go anyway?"

Tweedledee scratches the back of his head, examines the result of this procedure wriggling on the tip of his nail, and flicks the small black speck into the snow. "You're to go report to the spymaster first. Guess she's gonna decide what to do with you." He turns to Margo. "And you, it's off to the dungeon."

"What d'you think she did?" Tweedledum asks. "Probably stole something. You city elves are all thieves. 'S'well known."

Sera groans. "Better thieves than gormless prats like you two. Are we going, or what?"

The Tweedles inflate like a tandem of angry turkeys.

"Enough!" Margo barks. At this point, she just wants to get through this as fast as she possibly can, so there is no point wasting energy on these two. "Let's just go to the damn dungeon."

And be done with it, she doesn't add.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by burning goat dung. Because you gotta burn something._

 _Next up (and for a couple of chapters at least): The Inquisition is a mess._

 _As always, thank you all for your follows, favs, reviews, DMs etc. You are the wind under this story's wings._


	53. Chapter 53: A Play of Lights and Shadows

_Where Margo visits another dungeon, learns more about what happened with the templars, and spends some time with the spymaster._

* * *

The path to the dungeons offers only the cold comfort of predictable procedure. Even the Tweedles are being fastidious — and this, in an of itself, confirms Margo's suspicion that the social world of the Inquisition is truly going to hell in a handbasket. Nothing spells sinking ship quite like overwrought and punctilious bureaucracy. The two goons march them over to the requisitions tent, where Thren, scowling under her turban, receives Margo's belongings and notes their arrival in her ledger in an oddly bubbly script. After that, Tweedledum gestures Sera over to Torquemada's tent, and Tweedledee takes it upon himself to herd Margo into the Chantry.

She looks around with a muddled sort of feeling — Haven feels both familiar and alien. The smells are the same: fresh snow, wood fires, frying onions, frankincense. Sulphur and hot metal wafting up from the forge. But the faces have changed. The courtyard is practically crawling with templars. At the sight of their telltale armor, Margo wrestles down a kind of Pavlovian response, her fingers suddenly itching for Molly, or a grenade — or a rock, for that matter — and her legs ready to carry her either to safety or into the fray. She scans their faces. Many are young; most look strained and exhausted; all sport identical expressions of wary uncertainty.

The population of Chantry clerics has increased as well. As Tweedle corrals her up the steps, strands of conversations reach her, and Margo strains her ears to catch as much as possible, in case the information might prove useful later.

"... completely irresponsible, considering that we don't..."

"... the Commander. At least measures are being taken ..."

"... what else, but blood magic..."

The temple's main hall is oddly deserted. The cavernous colonnade, previously used to receive guests and socialize, is empty of people, nothing but the echo of their footsteps chasing after them in the semidarkness.

"Where is everyone?" Margo asks, not really expecting an answer.

Tweedle shrugs. "No congregating inside the chantry outside of scheduled times. Security measures."

They walk down the steps towards the basement, and Margo wrestles with an intense, disorienting feeling of deja-vu. The first time she walked this path was after Solas had dredged up Maile's memories in exchange for her own. For a second, she isn't sure whether she ever left — whether the last month or so actually happened at all and wasn't just a demented dream, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Her mind flashes to a short story by Ambrose Bierce, one of her brother's favorites. The protagonist, a soldier, hallucinates his return home to his wife in the space of the few seconds left to him before the noose snaps his neck. Perhaps all of this — Thedas, the Inquisition, this temple — is nothing but the last fever dream of her dying mind, a liminal space in which her consciousness is lost while her body shuts down.

"We're here. Lud? You...uh... this a good time, then?"

Margo quickly snaps to.

Oh no no no. If this Lud is, as she is guessing, the local jailkeeper, questions about whether this is a good time bode very poorly indeed. She has a flashback to Generic Goon. Her heartbeat picks up. Not that Generic Goon was the worst of her problems at the time, but he certainly did not contribute much to her enjoyment of the mad magister's hospitality. This is what has been irking her about Haven. The place seems to have acquired shades of Redcliffe.

Her fears are somewhat assuaged when it turns out Lud is a she — middle-aged, rotund, with dimpled, rosy cheeks and a web of laugh wrinkles around her eyes, which in the light of the torches are an odd shade of muddy green. Half of her face is covered with blocky tattoos. And she is no more than four feet — so, Margo decides, Homo Dwarvicus.

"'Course it's a 'good time,' you blighted mushroom. If you're thinking of asking me 'bout the spiders, just come out and say it. 'Is this a good time.' Peh. And since you're here — where, tell me, is the cleaning crew? Also, the meals are late again. How am I supposed to do my job with all you incompetent nughumpers stumbling about like sun-addled deepstalkers?" She pauses in her castigations, and looks Margo over. 'Now, what's it you have with you, then? Another one?"

To Margo's utter shock, Tweedle looks apologetic. "Yes, ma'am. I'll talk to Dreyfus 'bout the meals. This is... uh... the spymaster's last prisoner."

Lud narrows her eyes. "Elven lass? Well, if it ain't a sodding collection. Got all kinds now. Just missing one of 'em horned fellows, and we'll have a complete set. And where, by the Ancestors' revered shorthairs am I supposed to put her, eh? Not with Tethras, that's for sure. And I don't think she'd like being stuck with the odd chap, not that he's ever where you left him."

"Prickly? Is that you?"

Margo practically squeals with delight at the sound of Varric's voice. The only thing that prevents her from taking off towards it is Tweedle's gauntleted grip on her arm. "Not so fast."

"Varric!" she calls out instead. "Are you all right?"

She spots movement in one of the cells. "I'm fine, I'm fine. As far as imprisonments go, this one is downright pleasant. I've had worse experiences at the Blooming Rose."

Lud makes a disapproving noise. "No one wants to hear about that . Now. What's your name, lass?"

"Margo," Margo offers.

"Eh. Well, then. Let's see what I got for you..."

"I don't mind bunking with Evie," Margo tries.

"Don't be daft, girl. As if we'd keep the Lady Herald with the common folk. I suppose that thieving rapscallion with the frost-cough ain't coming back, so you might as well take his cell. Step in here, please."

Despite Lud's jovial, matronly bluntness, the dwarven woman moves like a trained killer, so when she unlocks the door to a cell kitty-corner from Varric's, Margo doesn't argue. It's not like there's anywhere to run — she did march herself into this. She looks around. It's everything one would want from a dank dungeon. A thin pile of straw, an excremental bucket, and a couple of metal rings mounted into a wall, complete with chains and manacles. Whatever are they for? Margo's mind volunteers an entirely incongruous image of Lud parading around in a dominatrix outfit, complete with shining thigh-high boots and a riding crop. Margo shakes her head. That's it. She's losing it.

She gets a brisk patdown, during which Lud discovers Auntie's Compendium , leafs through it for concealed weapons — or, perhaps, a lockpick — and returns it to Margo.

"Not a mage, so it's not like you're going to do blood magic from a paper cut, and I don't object to reading materials. Keep it." And then she offers a brief but oddly cordial nod and walks out of the cell. The lock snaps shut.

"Hey!" Varric's exclamation is full of righteous indignation. "She can keep reading materials, but I can't have writing materials? You know, my editor's not known for her patience, and sitting in here is putting me behind on my deadlines."

Lud shrugs. "Think of it as me doing the world a favor. Now, much as I enjoy your sparkling wit, Tethras, I have a job to do. Unlike you sorry lot." And with this, their odd warden proceeds towards the exit and disappears up the stairs, Tweedle in tow.

Margo takes a few steps forward to where she can see into Varric's cell. The dwarf is casually leaning against the metal bars of his cage, his hands in his pockets.

"I hear Redcliffe was a shithole, Prickly. Glad you made it. You all right?"

"It was a shithole, and I'm fine, give or take. Varric, explain to me what's happening here. Lud is... not quite what I was expecting."

Varric chuckles. "Enough to restore your faith in the Maker, isn't she? That's because, believe it or not, Lud answers to Ruffles, of all people."

"She's loyal to the ambassador?"

"Yep. I bet there's a story worth retelling there, but I haven't heard it yet. Maybe I'll just make one up."

"Varric, I am at a loss. What is happening? Who is in charge? And what happened to Evie?"

"Right to the point, eh, Prickly? Much as I hate to step on your right to skip ahead, I suggest you start at the beginning if you want any of this to make sense."

Margo nods in acquiescence. Varric takes a step back from the bars to give himself more room to gesticulate, and settles into what Margo identifies as his storytelling voice. "I'll spare you the journey to Therinfal — it doesn't make for much of a story. The interesting bit started when it turned out that the templar commander had been replaced by an envy demon. Not sure how, exactly, but there you have it. We fought our way through the keep, slipping on rotten fruit and bumping our heads on strangely low beams the whole way — you and I both know why. I'm sure it all looked hilarious from the outside, if you like that sort of humor. My brother Bartrand would have loved it. But that wasn't the end of it. The demon, ambitious thing that it was, decided to take over the Inquisition next. Don't ask me how that harebrained idea popped into its head. To hear the Chantry say it, demons are supposed to be clever — this one must have been the exception that proves the rule."

Margo grins. "Taking over the Inquisition? Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."

"Exactly my point. Anyway, it tried to get into the Herald's mind but must have not found it to its liking. Maybe it thought it was too crowded, since it wasn't the only one rattling around in there. There was another spirit, or person, or whatever else you want to call him — goes by Cole, nice kid — who decided to give Her Heraldship a hand. My advice? If ever Cole asks you if he can help you with something, run the other way and don't look back. Long story short, Envy stopped impersonating the commander, killed some templars, threw up some magical barriers, and, next thing you know, we were all charging after it, templars in tow, with exactly zero expectation of surviving."

"Because of Evie's luck siphon?"

"Heh, at that point even without the Herald's luck it was all going to the Void. That should be a curse, you know: 'May you be as lucky as the Herald of Andraste.' I'll give you the latest version of the story. We were getting overwhelmed, the demon was about to prevail, we were swimming in wounded and dying templars, Hero was out of commission with a blow to the head... The Seeker was barely holding her own, and I was out of bolts, just grenades left, and too much of a risk of friendly fire. This templar fellow, Ser Barris, charged after the demon, got a claw to the chest for his trouble, and collapsed practically on top of the Herald. The Iron Lady was occupied with holding up barriers, so by the time she made it over there, the templar wasn't breathing. And then Her Heraldness, still holding on to that dead templar, sort of waved at the demon, like she was about to bless it." Varric shakes his head. "Next thing you know, Envy — not much of a looker, that one, I can see why it thought the Lord Commander was an improvement — just... fell apart."

"Fell apart?" Margo repeats with a frown. "As in, crumbled?"

"No, Prickly. Crumbling would have been fine. I'm all for crumbling . That implies it's dry to begin with. No, no this was ..." Varric scowls in distaste. "Ever come upon one of those things you wish you could unsee? It sort of... scattered. Into uneven little bits. Wet little bits. That was the worst part. And after that, it scattered more, and so on, until nothing was left, just a sticky spot on the ground. I guess it solved the problem, but ugh. It's just wrong ."

Margo winces at the queasy feeling in her stomach. "What about the templar? This Ser Barris?"

"Ah, see, that's where the story gets really interesting. You like mysteries, Prickly? The second Envy... liquified? Vaporized? Anyway, the second it was gone, the Herald did another one of her little benedictions, and next thing you knew Ser Barris was back from the dead, fresh as a daisy."

Margo frowns, trying to construct a workable model for this bizarre narrative. Solas mentioned stories detailing this occurrence, but she had thought it an exaggeration. Is it more than a coincidence? Perhaps, if both spirits and souls are substantial in some way, then a conservation law must be in play. Does thermodynamics apply? Her mind grasps for the fragments of an old conversation — overheard by the warmth of a campfire what feels like centuries ago. Dorian had tried to theorize about Margo's own unlikely presence in their world. What had he called it? "A three-way swap."

She needs to keep focused. Cosmological models aside, the politics is what matters at the moment.

"Is that why everyone concluded Evie is a mage?

"No, Prickly, the reason everyone concluded the Herald is a mage was because of the kid. Cole. I'm sure you'll meet him soon. Until he showed up and started talking, the templars were still inclined to think that the Herald was Andraste reborn."

"I thought it was Cassandra who revealed Evie's status?" Margo frowns in puzzlement. Was that not what Solas had said? On the other hand, Solas had himself admitted that his information might have been faulty.

Varric shakes his head. "The Seeker did come out with it when we got back, but she didn't have much of a choice by that point. The gossip's been following us ever since Therinfal. Cassandra is... moral to a fault, but, sadly, no diplomat. Otherwise, I'd be telling you this story over ale."

"What did Cole say, exactly, that incriminated Evie?"

Varric sighs. "Cole's a bit... different, to put it mildly. Most of what he said didn't make much sense, but it hit the right soil, as it were. Oh, something about stopping the magic from flowing, something about 'those whose care is harmful and whose harm is careful.' Nice chiasmatic opposition, that one — I might even reuse it. The bad part of it was about the Conclave. You know, if I live long enough to write all of this down, I won't even have to embellish. 'Pain, fire. A mountain of corpses. Ash and blood. She didn't know their deaths were necessary. Her magic broken then repaired, she bears the power to mend the world.' Trouble was, he delivered all of this right outside of Therinfal, in front of all the templars, a bunch of terrified nobles, and not a few equally terrified Chantry clerics. After appearing out of thin air. Of course, by the time we got back to Haven, word had spread. It didn't help that the Herald didn't exactly take these revelations in stride."

Margo's eyes widen with the sudden flash of clarity, part of the convoluted picture finally clicking into place. "Varric, wait. Was Cole suggesting that Evie's luck siphon actually caused all that death? Skewed everyone's odds so that Evie could survive?"

"Think about it, Prickly. Hundreds burned to ash, and, right at the center of the explosion, exactly one survivor. One. Hundreds of lives snuffed out in an instant, and she didn't have so much as a scratch. Not to mention that glowing hand of hers that fixes rifts. What are the odds? Divine intervention or not, imagine how this must have felt to her. She's got qualms about killing bugs . By the time we came back to Haven, she was completely unresponsive. And that mark..."

Before Margo gets the chance to ask about the mark, their attention is drawn by the rhythm of approaching footsteps. Two figures materialize at the bottom of the stairs, both of them wearing the telltale hoods of Torquemada's scouts. Based on the long nose sticking from underneath one of them, she recognizes Asher, the snooty elven swordsman who accompanied their team in their fight against the templar camp. The other scout — a young human woman — Margo has not seen before. Behind them Lud is scowling like someone who has discovered cockroaches roaming her kitchen.

When he speaks, Asher's voice is tinged with a hint of malice. "The spymaster wants to see you."

Well, that didn't take long. "And I was settling in so nicely," Margo replies dryly.

The conversation with Torquemada starts predictably enough. Margo is led to the same room she visited during her previous encounters with the spymaster. The redhead is there, waiting at the oversized desk, and save for the dark circles under her eyes and a new sallow gauntness to her cheeks, she remains her familiar corvid self.

Margo occupies what she is beginning to think of as her seat.

After that, the rigamarole begins, but it quickly takes such a bizarre turn that Margo finds her mind drifting, barely able to follow the string of absurd commentary and even more absurd questions Torquemada levels at her. "I hear that Redcliffe was a harrowing experience. I am told you helped rescue a few mages... and a Tranquil? The Iron Bull speaks highly of your singing skills. Is Magister Alexius possessed by a demon too? Are you spying for Nevarra? It would be easier for you to simply tell the truth. Do you believe in the Maker? Did the elven apostate recruit you? How long have you been lovers? Have you read Varric's books? Have you ever been to Ostwick? How long have you known about Evelyn Trevelyan? Have you ever heard the Chant of Light in its unabridged version? What are your ties to the Dalish? Have you ever been to Cumberland? How long have you known Seeker Pentaghast?"

After some time, Margo loses track, except for the overall impression that Torquemada is leading her down the zany path of unchecked paranoia into a thicket of erroneous assumptions so impenetrable that the chances of her finding her way out are slim to none. Still, she attempts to tackle the questions in a reasonable way, though she is increasingly tempted to simply answer everything with "blue."

Finally, Torquemada pauses and glares at the two scouts standing guard by the door. "Leave us," she orders.

Margo swallows. She has no idea what comes over her — a kind of bone-deep lassitude at this Kafkaesque mess, perhaps — but the words are out before she can bite them back. "You believed me to be a Qunari spy, then a Tevinter one. Is it still Nevarra's turn, or will we be moving on to Rivain next?"

Torquemada pauses her aimless oscillations and perches on the side of the desk. Margo notes that the spymaster's shoulders droop down in a weary slouch. When she finally speaks, her words are oddly quiet. "I am not addled, agent." She fixes Margo with her pale eyes. "I do not believe you to be working for Nevarra."

Margo frowns. "Then why..."

Torquemada lifts a finger in warning. Margo prudently falls silent. The spymaster gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "captive audience."

"Cassandra would never betray the memory of the Divine, and hence she would never act against the Inquisition. Not even out of misguided patriotism. I will admit that your place in all of this baffles me, but in the grand scheme of things it is unimportant. I take Cassandra's word for what it is: you reported your suspicions to her and followed her order not to speak of it to others outside of those who noticed the same patterns. Your disrespect for the chain of command is punishable, of course, but it matters little. You matter little beyond your immediate utility. We have much bigger problems."

Margo waits patiently for the rest of the soliloquy.

"Do you know why Solas and Master Adan have kept the Herald sedated?" the spymaster asks, the melodic affectations of the trained bard nothing but a faint remainder in her voice. This weary, melancholy woman is not the Torquemada Margo was expecting. "Definitely not the right droids," she mumbles and tries to see if blinking a few times might help dislodge the overwhelming feeling of absurdity. It doesn't.

"What was that, agent?"

"I heard the mark was no longer stable. And that Evie was... incoherent."

"How very well-informed of you, but I suppose you are sharing your accommodations with Varric, so that is not a surprise. At first, those were the reasons. We thought then that things could not get much worse. Quite naive of us, in retrospect. No, agent, the primary reason Lady Trevelyan remains sedated is that when she wakes she demands punishment. The Herald of Andraste believes herself the cause of the deaths at the Conclave."

Torquemada sighs and rubs her temples in little circles, the gesture oddly banal. "I cannot claim to understand what has been done to Evelyn Trevelyan. Solas believes that someone attempted to make her Tranquil when she was a child. There is no brand, so I find that rather unlikely, despite what the apostate claims about a supposed scar. But... I have seen things. Terrible, awful things done in the name of righteousness. Or love. Or faith. It might even surprise you to know that I have done some of these terrible things myself."

Margo represses a skeptical harrumph. She can think of very few things that would be less surprising, but then again Torquemada's tone is on the sardonic side.

"Attempts to conceal a child's magic are stupid, but, like all stupidity, far from uncommon. Whatever this... Cole did, it didn't simply restore her magic. It must have stripped the protection of forgetting from the traumas of her past. Becoming aware of them, all at once...Well. But, of course, the simple facts remain. If she is indeed a mage, she is untrained, un-Harrowed, and unstable. And, as it appears, immune to templar powers."

"Spymaster, I think Evie is more resilient than you give her credit for. Give her time."

Torquemada's tone turns steely. "There is no time, agent. Evelyn Trevelyan is not a well woman. I was under the impression that you of all people may care that she does not suffer needlessly. The Chantry clerics, incapable of any sort of agreement otherwise, are all convinced that she caused the death of almost five hundred souls, not counting the Divine. Worse, she is convinced she is at fault. And I am inclined to think that this might be true. You were the one to notice this purported luck distortion, yes?" Torquemada's nostrils flare with a frustrated exhale. "It matters little what I believe. What we believe. If the information Cassandra shared had not been leaked, then maybe..." She laughs mirthlessly. "We appear to have a problem with intelligencers, you see. The rumors spread like wildfire. Josephine is flooded with letters from our already scant supporters in both Orlais and Ferelden, demanding to know whether it is true that the Herald of Andraste is an untrained apostate — or possibly Tranquil, or, better yet, an abomination. Or whether she caused the explosion. Or — this one is especially inspired — whether she is a demon that feeds on death."

Margo exhales a breath she didn't know she was holding. This is a public relations disaster of truly epic proportions. Not quite what she had expected, certainly, but Margo isn't sure whether the reality is better or worse than what she imagined. More complex, certainly, but also ironically predictable. How perversely logical that, in a world that runs on it, magic would inspire such fear and loathing. "The Inquisition has a public opinion problem," she offers diplomatically. The understatement of the century.

Torquemada smiles with absolutely no humor. "The people would more readily accept an elf, or a dwarf — a Qunari, even — for their Herald. But an untrained mage of noble birth, concealed from the Circles? One with no control over her magic? One whose inexplicable and seemingly undeserved survival possibly cost us the Divine, hundreds of lives, and a chance at reconciliation?" She shakes her head.

Oh, Evie. The kid didn't ask for any of this.

"We have been hosting several emissaries from noble houses that dutifully relinquished their children to the Circles. They demand an investigation — and threaten to withdraw their financial and political support otherwise. You have noticed that we do not grow our own crops or produce our own food, yes? As things are currently, it wouldn't take much more than the opposition of two or three prominent families to establish a chokehold on trade and simply starve us out. What is more, the competing factions within what remains of the Chantry have united unanimously against what they perceive as a heretical organization and a Herald that is an affront to Chantry teachings. You saw the Chantry delegation visiting Haven, I am sure. There are those among them who are calling for the Rite of Tranquility as the only solution."

"Would you really consider this? And risk interfering with Evie's ability to close the rifts?" Margo tries, and fails, to keep the angry tremble out of her voice.

"Amusing that Solas appears to share your exact concern. It is not a decision I consider lightly, and it gives me no pleasure to entertain it. I simply fear that it might be a mercy, in the end."

"And an expedient way to placate the Inquisition's critics," Margo bites out.

Torquemada lowers herself into the chair opposite Margo and steeples her fingers, the gesture more one of nervous exhaustion than machiavellian scheming. "In truth, I am not certain that this can be salvaged. Perhaps this is the Maker's will. Only He, in His unfathomable mercy, would rain such subtle horrors on his wayward children, don't you think?" Torquemada closes her eyes briefly. "There will be no avoiding a trial. And it will most certainly be a public spectacle — we have absolutely no choice in the matter. At most, Josephine, Cullen, and I can attempt to choreograph it. But we are struggling against unfavorable odds. To put it mildly."

There must be a reason why Torquemada is oversharing. Margo seizes on the opening. "Could the trial be used to project a... different impression? To change people's hearts about the Herald? Create an illusion of strength?" She frowns. Wait a damn second. What does Torquemada mean by "choreographing?" Is this, in fact, an elaborate con? "Spymaster, do you mean to say that you are pretending to be siding with the Chantry clerics?"

Torquemada inclines her head in her habitual avian gesture of speculative interest, though the lethal edge is somewhat dulled by visible exhaustion. "A public trial needs antagonists, agent. It needs victims and scapegoats. Heroes and villains. One is only as good as one's enemies, and is it not much easier to overcome one's enemies if they are already secretly your allies?" She smiles pleasantly. "But my hands are tied as long as the Herald cannot — or will not — stand on her own."

The spymaster remains silent for a long time, lost in thought, her gaze unfocused. Margo waits. "Even if what the four of you have uncovered is true — any of it — you understand that it can never be known, yes? All rumors to this effect must be discredited. It would be easier to retain support if the Herald were a ruthless, cunning monster. But weakness? When it comes to magic, agent, weakness is the one vice that will never be forgiven. We must provide... an alternative explanation."

The former bard turned spymaster stands and pivots to the door. "This is bigger than any of us. The Inquisition must survive long enough to close the Breach. We have the templars for now, but we are unlikely to retain them if something is not done, and quickly. Already they turn a sympathetic ear to the allegations against the Herald."

"Why are you telling me all this?" Margo frowns. "Considering that I am currently imprisoned on your orders…"

Torquemada glances at Margo over her shoulder. "Conveniently for you — and, as it so happens, for me — your time at Redcliffe puts you outside of the circle of suspicion. You could not have disseminated Cassandra's report simply because you were not here to do it. It is more than I can say of others. And whatever else you are, I know you care about Lady Trevelyan. But most importantly, she seems to care for you. Perhaps you will be able to get through to her. I will arrange for you to have access. You have a day. Give me an alternative to Tranquility. If you can't, then I will do what is necessary."

"Spymaster, who else knows about this? Other than the commander and the ambassador?" Because it certainly looks to Margo like both Solas and Varric have been kept ignorant of these background machinations.

"We may not be in Orlais, but The Game is played the same everywhere. We all have our designated dances." Torquemada's smile is charmingly sweet, and all the more terrifying for it. "Tread lightly, agent. And mind your step."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by unreliable narrators._

 _Next up: Well, it's only been many months and many many words, but we're finally getting to one of the big reveals, so the next couple of chapters are going to be very Evie-centric. In other words, more bad news on the horizon. :-D But most immediately for the next chapter: Solas, Adan, Cole, and venturing into the Fade, Evie, and some revelations._


	54. Chapter 54: The Roads of the Beyond

_In which Margo has a surprise theological debate._

Happy Holidays!

* * *

"Stranger, spinner, strewn then spun back from scraps. Stranded. Like me, but different. Oh. I startled you."

As it turns out, the theatrical hand-to-heart gesture is, in fact, a legitimate response to shocked surprise. Margo forces herself to take a breath, but it gets stuck somewhere on the way. A young man with a messy mop of ash-white hair and large, pale, slightly unfocused blue eyes is crouching in a part of her cell that stood empty seconds ago. His fingers drum an uneven rhythm against the metal bars. When her heart rate slows down from its mad gallop and her brain becomes once again operational, Margo decides that this must be the mythical Cole.

"Hi," she croaks. Nothing more articulate comes out. "Cole, right? I've heard about you. It's nice to meet you in person."

"I tried to help, but I made it worse. I'm sorry. Can you help her?"

Margo considers her visitor. There's something about the boy that feels at once alien and familiar, and the dissonance sets her teeth on edge. Her attention snags on the jerky movements and alliterative speech, but if she turns her head just right and lets Cole stay in her peripheral vision, the discomfort is replaced by an odd sensation of relaxed plenitude. It's a strange, half-forgotten feeling from childhood, when her parents were still alive and the family would gather around Baba's kitchen table. She and Jake, Mom, Baba and Uncle Janos, and, on rare occasions, her father. Speaking in four languages across the spread of food, not always in perfect communion, but with enough meaning to go around. To her child's mind, it was like being inside a perfect bubble, all the rough edges of the world rounded off and tucked in. Safe.

She forces herself to snap out of it. "You mean Evie, right? Yes. I definitely mean to try."

Cole shifts, and for half a second he seems to disappear. "Help, but not from this side. She doesn't hear from this side."

And then, he is gone.

The room where they are keeping Evie isn't much bigger than a closet, but it has a bed, several chairs, and a wash basin — which is more than Margo can say about her own accommodations. It is, however, windowless, and the air is stuffy. The young scout that escorted her to see Torquemada ushers her through the door, then shuts it behind her. At the sight of the room's three occupants, Margo's heart leaps. She is greeted with gruff enthusiasm by a visibly aged Master Adan and with an intense, overlong look from Solas. Before she can decide how to negotiate this particular reunion, Adan gives her an awkward one-armed hug, quickly transmuted into vigorous slaps on the back, and then he embarks on a long and crabby jeremiad about Margo abandoning her alchemical duties, where she is actually needed. She nods, by and large in full agreement.

When it is his turn, Solas rises from his seat at the bedside and glides over to stand in front of her. "If greetings are to be exchanged..." After a moment of hesitation, his hands graze her upper arms and settle in a gentle squeeze that lasts a fraction too long for merely friendly. He sports one of his patented contradictory expressions, an odd mixture of concern, amusement, and resignation tracing a vertical line between his brows. "You have returned, despite suggestions to the contrary. Are you unharmed, fenor?" He examines her with mostly clinical attention — searching for residual damage — though his gaze lingers on her lips before he meets her eyes.

"Alive and kicking. I suppose I just couldn't stay away." Margo gives the elf a rather pointed look. And while there is now a hint of unease underneath the vertigo of seeing him, Margo can't quite suppress the small lopsided smirk. Solas's lips quirk in return, and his fingers tighten. Then he releases her, and begins to pace back and forth, hands clasped at his back.

"We have decreased the dosage of the sleeping potion, as per the spymaster's orders. I am not certain that this is a wise idea. The magic of the mark remains unstable, and there are fewer factors to account for when the Herald sleeps."

Margo looks over at Adan for confirmation. The senior alchemist rubs his face and lets out a tired sigh. The skin around his eyes is puffy with the shadows of protracted sleeplessness, and his usually shaved head sports a three-day salt-and-pepper stubble that puts Margo in mind of a bottle brush. "Can't keep her drugged forever, I suppose. Anyway, the calmative is slow to wear off, so you might as well get comfortable."

As it turns out, getting comfortable is easier said than done. Their vigil takes them well into the night, though it is difficult to tell with any certainty: the only way to track time is by increasing degrees of exhaustion, hunger, and bladder woes. There is a nook with a rudimentary latrine tucked away behind a curtain, the stench of ammonia in the narrow space so thick you could hammer nails into it. But at least someone thought about privacy. Once back in her seat, Margo buries her face in her hands and closes her eyes. It's the sort of bone-deep tiredness where no position brings any relief. A sudden rumble makes her look up. At the foot of the bed, where Evie is curled up under a coarse woolen blanket, Master Adan snores, slumped over the side of his chair. On the other side, Solas watches the mark's chartreuse flickering. His lips are set in a grim line, and he looks as worn as Margo feels.

For a few seconds, she watches the elf, unobserved. There is a new tiredness to his features — the lines that bracket his mouth when he frowns are a little deeper, the skin under his eyes is a shade darker. He seems paler than usual, which draws Margo's attention to the faint scatter of freckles across his nose. His jaw and cheekbones look more angular, the skin stretched taut.

"Aren't they feeding you?" Margo asks with a scowl, and then winces. Apparently, his wan appearance activated some atavistic grandmotherly instinct she didn't realize she had. Right. She's one flowery kerchief away from turning into Baba.

Solas looks up in surprise, eyebrows raised, but his lips hitch upward at one corner. "Are you asking me whether I eat enough?"

Margo nods. Might as well own it. "Ingrained cultural habits. Next, I'll likely ask you about your sleep, and then you might want to stop me before I get to the really invasive questions, like whether your stool is regular, and whether you are cleaning your teeth twice a day."

Solas greets this announcement with something suspiciously close to a snort, followed by the marginally more dignified sounds of throat-clearing. "Ah... I... Do not mistake my surprise for unappreciation — it simply has been some time since anyone inquired about such matters." Margo identifies the slight tremor of his shoulders as suppressed laughter. Based on the way his lips are quirking around a yet unformulated utterance, she concludes that the elf is about to reciprocate her question, likely to dubious comedic effect.

"I suppose someone has to shoulder the thankless task, then," she parries quickly.

"I would not wish your concern to be one-sided. Other than digestion and sleep, what topics should one cover in such inquiries?" Solas's eyes flash with a mischievous little twinkle, but there is a softness to his smile. He pauses, considering her. "Are you truly uninjured?" A hesitation. "Would you speak to me of Redcliffe?"

Margo's stomach tightens into a painful little knot. She shrugs. "I'm mostly fine. I want a bath. As in a proper, hot bath. With soap. And Redcliffe is... not a short discussion. Have you tried to reach Evie in the Fade?" As far as non sequiturs go, it's not subtle.

Solas narrows his eyes, looking thoroughly unimpressed by the abrupt change of topic. But then he nods slowly. "I have. I am able to locate the Herald easily enough, but to little effect: I believe she knows me to be there, but she ignores my presence. Cole tried also with little success, and beyond these few attempts, I am reluctant to abandon my post. To modulate the magic of the mark within the Fade would pose a greater challenge."

"That's interesting." Margo cocks her head. Why would this be? And why is he the only one able to affect the mark in the first place? Is it his talent as a healer? Or more fodder for her spirit theory? But there is little time for theoretical discussions. "I met Cole. I think he said that Evie won't listen on this side either. I'd like to try to talk to her in the Fade first."

Solas's expression turns carefully neutral, save for a tightening around his eyes. "It may be preferable to the alternative, though you would have to enter the Fade as would a Dreamer, and not as a spirit. And you would have to exercise caution."

Margo frowns. "What do you mean?"

"From what I have observed, it would appear that you, much like certain spirits, shape a demesne around yourself within the Dreaming, one that at once expresses and sustains your essence."

"Is this something that's limited to spirits?" She turns it over in her head. "What about demons?" Intriguing as this hypothesis is, it seems to miss a crucial problem — why is so much of her Fade landscape tangled up with Baba? She will need to sort out Baba's identity soon enough.

"Some share this skill, certainly." Solas leans back in his chair. "For one interested in the Fade, such an ability is fascinating regardless, and I would welcome the opportunity to explore it further alongside you, were you to permit it." His lips twitch in a near-smile.

Margo wrinkles her nose. He looks entirely too pleased with himself. "Uh-huh. As I recall, you have a rather tactile definition of 'exploration.'"

"I certainly do not!" The peevishness quickly flips to impishness. "Not exclusively, in any event. I always thought of it as one valid method among many, though should you have recommendations, I would be eager to expand my approach."

At this point, Margo is pretty sure the conversation has veered away from the technicalities of manipulating the Fade. Her eyes narrow. This is bold, even for him, but she'll be damned if she lets him have the last word on this one. Margo purses her lips in mock speculation. "Oh? You're open to methodological revisions? And, hypothetically speaking, you would not object to taking instructions?"

The teasing would probably work better if she weren't blushing through it.

At least she isn't alone in her predicament. Solas, clearly caught by surprise, succumbs to more throat-clearing, and the tips of his ears acquire a pinkish hue. He shifts in his seat, inexplicably uncomfortable. When he speaks, his tone is light, though a little too quiet to leave any doubt as to the nature of the topic. "Not in the least. One does strive not to disappoint."

Margo sighs, the sharp jolt of raw desire washed away by a wave of sudden guilt. Neither of them is young and stupid enough for this, and yet they fall into this dance too easily and always at the exclusion of everything else. "We... got sidetracked. Regarding the Dreaming, have you considered that this shaping of the Fade might be an Avvar technique as well? I got the idea from Amund. I'll have to ask him if I get the chance." She tries to rub the exhaustion out of her eyes, but only manages to make them sting more.

Solas remains silent for a few heartbeats, and Margo decides that it would be prudent to look at something more innocuous. A snoring Adan does the trick. Finally, she hears a soft sigh, and when Solas speaks, his tone is warm, but more neutral. "I hope you share what the Avvar says on the subject. He seems... rather skeptical about my intentions and tends to answer my inquiries with mocking obfuscation."

"Sounds like you have found your match!" Margo chuckles. And then her eyes are drawn to Evie's sleeping shape, and she breathes through another pang of discomfort. "You said I would have to interact with the Fade in a different way. What do you mean?"

Solas's eyes drift back to the mark. "Skilled Dreamers walk the Fade instead of shaping it around themselves. They do so without expectations or desires, and thus the Fade remains at rest. It is what permits one to enter the dreams of others or to explore the traces and memories retained in the physical world."

"The trouble is that by this definition I am certainly not a skilled Dreamer."

"Dreaming is not a singular talent, fenor. But, in this case, it does not matter whether you are or are not skilled — it matters only that you can tell the Dreaming from the Waking. I should remain here, but Cole could guide you to the Herald. From there it would be in your hands to try to help her. She will not hear us — let us hope she will listen to you." He gives her a concerned look. "Be cautious. One is rarely alone when wandering the Fade."

It is the same small room, but its edges are blurred, as if someone took an eraser to her peripheral vision but gave up halfway. Being in the Fade without actively shaping it is uncomfortable, and the unease catalyzes into a nervous fluttering in the pit of her stomach.

The room is empty, save for Cole. The young man is rimmed with a silvery nimbus — Margo can discern its glow if she doesn't look at him directly.

"Quick. We must hurry. I'll take you to her." Margo is only mildly surprised when the boy reaches for her hand. "Tiny plant, but deep roots, spread far below the surface. There's more of you here. You remind me of me, before. It's... nice. Like cool water on tired feet."

Margo smiles at this cryptic utterance and clasps his hand. The boy puts her in mind of Goran. Truth be told, she's grateful for the contact. It distracts her from her own panicked thoughts about the potential consequences of failure.

They walk up a marginally familiar stairway, but its quivering, mirage-like textures preclude definitive identification. And, on the way, they encounter others. If Margo stares at these presences directly, they retain the contours of plausibility: a cat leaping down the corridor, a nondescript elven servant carrying a load of firewood, a moth fluttering by until it finds refuge in a shadowy nook. But as soon as the apparitions pass into Margo's peripheral vision, they morph, stretching into fantastical and grotesque shapes — glowing, dendritic, barbed, oozing, amorphous... Beings woven of cobwebs and ice, of fire and glass, and others still spun of substances that defy naming or classification. And even then, she gets the feeling that these aren't their true forms, and that her perception is simply unable to register what they are. Rarely can she spot eyes that are identifiable as such — and when she does, they reveal little of their owners — but she can't shake the impression that they are being watched.

"Are these spirits?" Margo whispers.

Cole turns to her, his expression placid. "Yes. The many. Almost there."

They come upon a wooden door.

"Here. She is behind, except further. Trapped, troubled, trailing tears. A difficult child. It was her all along. " Cole shimmers in agitation. " Help her, please!"

Margo's hand tremble when she reaches for the door handle. What if she says the wrong things? What if Evie won't listen?

The room is not much more than a monastic cell, its only ornament a large stained-glass mosaic on the back wall, rendered in vibrant reds and yellows. Margo squints, trying to stabilize the image. It looks like the stylized depiction of a decapitated woman above a bearded, vaguely Byzantine-looking fellow of the priestly persuasion — if the combination of a mitre and a brutalist beard are anything to judge by. At the center of the cell, kneeling on a worn woolen rug of an undecided color, is Evie.

Margo tilts her head. At the edges of her vision Evie scatters, reassembles. Kneeling on the rug is a young girl, eleven or twelve perhaps, with long umber hair tumbling down her back in frizzy tangles.

"Hey kiddo," Margo says quietly.

Evie doesn't turn.

"Can I come in?" It sounds weak, but what can you do?

Evie doesn't turn.

Margo pads to the side, but her maneuvers are fruitless. She circumambulates the kneeling figure, but no matter her own position within the cell, Evie's back remains to her.

Margo sits on the floor and leans against the wall.

"I'll just stay right here, if you don't mind. If you want to chat, I'll listen."

She doesn't know how long she sits there. Time trickles, warps on itself, becomes an irrelevant variable.

"And He knew He had wrought amiss.  
So the Maker turned from his firstborn  
And took from the Fade  
A measure of its living flesh—"

Evie's sing-song interrupts abruptly. Margo shivers. The voice has a strange quality: it is as if it is doubled, an older woman's deeper timbre overlaying the child's high notes. "Have you ever heard the Threnodies?"

Margo shakes her head. "No. Tell me?"

A pause. "The Chantry teaches us that the Maker was disappointed with his first children. So he created the Veil and tried again." Her shoulders rise with a drawn breath.

"Then the Maker said:  
'To you, My second-born, I grant this gift:  
In your heart shall burn  
An unquenchable flame  
All-consuming, and never satisfied.  
From the Fade I crafted you,  
And to the Fade you shall return  
Each night in dreams  
That you may always remember Me.'"

The young woman falls silent. When she speaks again, her voice is eerily flat. "I wonder whether He ever told them what He wanted. Do you think He said He'd turn them out if they didn't do as He hoped? I bet it was implied." She draws a breath. "And then, because the first batch came out not to His liking, He created another type of wretched creature. Us. 'Unquenchable flame.' So you can yearn forever for a home you're banished from?" She pauses. The silence stretches. "What kind of abomination does that to His children?"

Evie turns slowly, and Margo represses a flinch. She looks both impossibly young and impossibly old, with nothing in between: in the features of the young girl Margo can see the crone to come. Evie's blue eyes are rimmed with red, her cheeks streaked with fresh tears and the silver of old salt tracks.  
The affectless facade cracks, shatters like thin ice, and Margo recognizes what it concealed: a profound, nameless fury. "You see it, too, don't you? He made the Veil, and so we die. If it weren't for that... everyone could move whenever they wanted. No one would get stuck. Or confused. But no, He willed us to be like moths, or... or...or... little fish, the decorative ones you stick in ponds. So that, in our minuscule, senseless lives, we would not forget Him." She stops, gulps for air. And then finishes on a hiss. "How could Andraste love such a cruel, pompous, self-indulgent, short-sighted, ill-humored, fickle... such...such... Ugh! Asshat !" She practically growls the last word.

Oy. "Evie, sweetheart... What is this about?" Other than a crisis of faith, of course, but Margo suspects there is more to it than theological anxieties. "What brought this on?"

Evie wipes at her eyes with her sleeve and glares balefully at the floor. "It was me. My doing. My fault." Her hands ball into angry fists. "The Chantry says that we are all His creatures. Then why would He make me this way? What did I ever do to Him?"

"Slow down, honey. Slow down. What was your fault? Make you what way?" Aside from the fact that, as far as she can tell, it was asshole family members and not any kind of divine providence that made Evie into what she is, Margo tries to decide whether bringing up the Conclave will help or hinder. She opts for the middle way. "I can see you are blaming yourself for something. What is it?"

A choked little laugh escapes the young woman's lips. "Don't you see? Aunt Lucille was right all along. The deaths. All the deaths. All the way from the beginning. Mom, and the others — Millie, and Lauren... and Graham. I don't think he ever grew up from being a baby, now that I think about it. It was me . I didn't know..." Evie's voice breaks on a sob. She shakes her head; presses her lips into a thin line; wipes at her nose with a loud, furious sniff. "I know why you're here. Because I have to go back. To close the Breach." Evie's voice grows fierce, her face twisting with a combination of anger and intransigence. "Maybe we shouldn't close it. Maybe we should expand it. Do away with the whole stupid thing. See how He likes that ."

Margo's eyes widen in realization. Of course. Genitivi had a passage about this. "The first children, that's spirits, right? That's what the Chantry claims?"

Evie nods and clutches her hands in her lap. Despite her wrath, she is slowly shedding her discordant doubling and coalescing back into something closer to her normal Waking avatar. A young woman under unimaginable stress.

"And you care about them? The spirits? Or you care that they got 'locked away'?"

"We're all locked away! But yes. I care. Wouldn't you? They didn't ask for any of it. They didn't even ask to be created in the first place. They didn't try to shape the world. It was fine, as far as they were concerned. They just were. Why wasn't that enough?" Evie's jaw tightens. By the end of the sentence, she's practically screaming. "Why aren't we enough?"

Margo sighs. "You're right. No one asked for any of it." Oh, but she is so utterly ill-equipped to have this kind of conversation. Her own amorphous, intellectualized spiritualism never produced the sort of cosmological angst that a profound religiosity ingrained from early childhood can generate. Well. She'd better step up to the plate. "Evie, I don't think the Veil is what causes us to be mortal." Margo stops abruptly, a hair away from using her own world as a counterexample. Instead, she takes a deep breath. "Take plants. They still seed, grow, die. Animals, too. Some are incredibly long-lived, some are not. I think it'd happen even if the Veil weren't there. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes, all the time." She is about to say "all that is solid melts into air" and then almost snorts at the surreal impulse. Quoting Marx for a religious debate on transience a universe away from hers is truly the pinnacle of absurdity. "Evie, the Breach hurts both sides. And you can fix that."

The young woman says nothing for a long time.

"All this time... How was I to know there was a difference? I never saw a difference. No one ever told me. And then they made me forget, tucked it all away. Why couldn't I just go to the Circle, like my sister? None of this would have happened, then. And everyone would still be alive." With a deep breath, Evie draws herself up, shoulders unfurling. Her chin is tilted at a defiant angle. "I've heard what they're saying. About what to do with me. At least if I were Tranquil I wouldn't have to think about any of it. It wouldn't hurt."

Margo shakes her head, trying to dislodge the cobwebs. With this way of being in the Dreaming, it is a challenge to not simply accept the nonsensical parts of Evie's speech at face value, and it takes all of Margo's attention to keep the important threads in focus without glossing over them in mindless agreement. She knows she's missing things, but the thoughts slip away. Focus , she orders herself. There, something tangible — the impulse to give up. That she can understand. "Sweetheart, from what I can tell, Tranquility is not the refuge you think it is. If the mark retains its power, you'll be turned into an instrument, or a weapon, always to be wielded by someone else."

"I am already an instrument!" Evie's voice rises and breaks, and Margo draws back at the sheer wrath of her. "A mindless thing, with no voice! 'Mind your manners! Don't ask questions! Sit up straight! Look pretty! Bear children! Close the Breach!'" The young woman is practically vibrating with fury.

Something flickers in the doorway. Margo spots a rat scurrying by — but then her peripheral vision catches a familiar shape: air and fire and molten glass. Ifrit .

Let me in.

Quickly, on instinct, she scoots closer to Evie and puts one arm then the other around the girl's shoulders. Evie flinches, sniffles, and wipes angrily at the tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Well that just won't do, will it?" Margo's voice is soothing but matter-of-fact — she somehow manages to keep the tremble of terror out of it. She hugs Evie, gingerly at first, then more fiercely. The young woman bristles and resists, and then, as if all the energy is drained out of her along with her anger, her body softens and she huddles into the embrace, curling up into a little ball. Margo strokes the girl's hair and rocks her back and forth in a gentle, swaying motion.

She casts her eyes towards the doorway. It is clear of visitors.

"' Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him,'" Evie grumbles into Margo's sleeve. It's more surly than angry. "I'll always be serving ."

"Well, letting them make you Tranquil is certainly no way to break out of that cycle, is it? Then you wouldn't even have a say in whom you serve."

"Maybe it'll make the mark go away." Evie's voice is tiny.

"Even if it did, it would mean that the Breach would reopen eventually, and countless beings would suffer."

Evie sighs quietly. "I wasn't supposed to be at the Conclave, but Max said he'd keep an eye on me, and Bann Trevelyan thought I needed to be seen ' in a political setting .' That it would be good ' for my prospects .'" She spits out the citations like something unpalatable. "The only reason I even wandered into that horrible room was because my monthlies started, and I was looking for a privy. And Divine called out for me to help, but instead... All those people. It was my fault. Andraste... At least Max had to leave to meet the dwarven traders that day... If he hadn't... I could never..."

"Shh. None of us choose it, Evie. We're all stumbling through it as best we can."

The girl looks up. "When I wake up, there's going to be a big public thing, isn't there? I'll be accused of being an apostate. And of killing hundreds of people." She pauses. "It's all true, you know."

There is a time for coddling, and then there is a time for straight talk. "Maybe. But that's not the problem. They will accuse you of being an untrained mage. They'll say you might turn into an abomination. And then they will try to turn you into something they can deploy for their own purposes. Not... you know. For the benefit of all living beings." Margo pivots a little so that she can meet Evie's gaze. "You will have to prove them wrong. Do you have any control over your magic?"

Evie flinches away from the word as if Margo had hit her.

"Your abilities. Can you control them?"

At length, Evie straightens up from her fetal position, and gives Margo a cagey little look. "I..." She pauses, mulling something over. "I always thought they were just stories. Fables, you know. Prayers. That sort of thing. So I could sleep easier."

"Whatever tools you have at your disposal, kiddo, you're going to need to use them all."

Evie looks up. "They will think me monstrous."

Margo is pleased to note there is no self-pity in the statement. It's a pragmatic observation. She takes hold of Evie's hand, and squeezes it. The mark flashes green under her palm.

"Then decide what kind of monster you are going to be."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the Chant of Light, which is one weird piece of writing if you dig into it._

 _Next up: The trial, and Evie Trevelyan finally coming into her own, for better or for worse._


	55. Chapter 55: The Herald of Andraste

_In which a witch trial does not go as planned._

 _Content warning: this chapter is pretty graphically violent_

* * *

They call it a "hearing" instead of a "trial." It's a small but hard-won concession, one for which, Margo guesses, Josephine likely fought with all the power of her diplomatic charm and political acumen. Whatever they want to call it, the process stretches from late morning well into the afternoon. And it may not be a trial in its modern definition of the term, but there is no doubt that the large crowd assembled inside the nave — a soaring, cavernous hall lit with the fractured colors of seven stained glass windows that fan out beneath the chantry's dome — is waiting for justice to be meted with increasing impatience.

They remind her of vultures.

The dais is wide enough to accommodate a truly populous and eclectic assortment of characters. From her seat on the "witness bench," Margo watches the clerics in their heinous robes and even more heinous hats — the more preposterous the hat, the higher the cleric is on the ecclesiastical totem pole, it seems. Over the course of the afternoon, Margo learns that the two in front — a man with the broken capillaries of a habitual drinker, and a middle-aged woman with a pasty complexion and beady little eyes — are, respectively, Grand Chancellor Roderick and Mother Agrippina. An additional two dozen or so ecru robes dot the assembled crowd. Next to the Chantry representatives, a pair of nobles in fussy, expensive-looking outfits whisper to each other, their heads bent close together. To their left, the Inquisition leadership trifecta — Cassandra is not among them — looks grim.

At one end of the low, hard-backed bench into which their ragtag crew has been sardined, Cole taps his foot against the stones in time with a rhythm only he can hear. Next to him Solas stares at the unfolding circus, his perfect posture and stony expression leaving very little doubt as to his take on the proceedings. Margo feels his shoulder pressed against hers, an abrupt reminder of how much more solid bodies are on the Waking side. On the other side of her, Varric leans back, ankle propped on a knee. The pose garners him an assortment of outraged glares from the nearby clerics, but he just smirks like they owe him money. Bracketing off their ill-assembled crew, Cassandra radiates such regal contempt that Margo decides that Varric's claims that the Seeker is, in fact, Nevarran royalty are not just artistic embellishments. Except for the dwarf, all of their knees stick out too high — either the bench is of dwarven design, or it has been repurposed from a kneeling pew to reflect their current social position.

"Please bring the accused forward."

The speaker — a tall, grizzled noble with an aquiline nose and a large port-wine stain on his cheek — was introduced by Josephine as Lord Evernase. Using the nobles as arbiters is another hard-won compromise, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that letting the Chantry have at it would have turned this into a Salem witch trial faster than you can say "consorting with demons."

Evie, in a drab, colorless shift so long it almost conceals her bare toes, is led to the foot of the dais from her position in a makeshift cage at the side of the room, from which she was forced to listen to the accusations and testimonies mounted against her throughout the afternoon.

"There's Ser Barris," Varric whispers, and he points his chin at the templar who serves as Evie's escort. Margo notes that his hold on the young woman is cautious — under different circumstances, it might look like he is offering her his arm for support. Of course, every aspect of the process — down to Evie's outfit and the very exact things each of them is meant to say if called upon — has been carefully arranged in advance. Choreographed, indeed. Torquemada, as it turns out, likes to micromanage. No great surprise, that.

Evie comes to stand a few feet away from the platform — a short, fragile-looking young woman in a plain dress that is one step away from a nun's habit. Her hands, pale and delicate, are clasped in front of her.

"Lady Evelyn Trevelyan." Based on the tone, the address is not meant as a honorific. "You have already heard the accusations of apostasy, murder, and assault on Chantry property leveled against you. Most of the testimonies supporting them have been shared." The noble crosses his arms over his brocaded chest. "What say you in your defense?"

"Lord Evernase, I wish to remind you that Lady Trevelyan has not been accused of anything as of yet, technically speaking. We are here to establish whether there are grounds for advancing such accusations in the first place, and hence whether there is cause for conducting a formal trial at a later date."

"You are splitting hairs, Ambassador Montilyet, but very well. Let me rephrase it."

"What is there to rephrase?" Chancellor Roderick's particular brand of nasal pomposity would be especially at home in the visa department of a consulate. "We are here because one of this Inquisition's very own founders, Seeker Pentaghast, reported that the girl is very likely an untrained mage, an apostate concealed by her family — while, I might add, other noble houses ungrudgingly fulfilled their duty. An apostate whose unchecked magic caused the death of the Divine and obliterated the Conclave. An apostate who now demands that the Templar order turn from its rightful service to the Chantry and pledge itself to this Inquisition. An apostate who has the temerity to claim that she is the Herald of Andraste! If this assembly and my lords remain unconvinced, I urge us to call in more witnesses. Let us interrogate Seeker Pentaghast's associates next."

"I think we have heard plenty as it is, chancellor, much of it from you." The other noble — a woman in her fifties with pale red hair piled on her head in a plaited crown — taps a sharp, curved fingernail against the armrest of her chair.

"Speak louder! We can't hear in the back!" someone pipes up from the crowd.

"Silence!" Commander Rutherford glares daggers in the general direction of the offending audience member.

Roderick makes a sour face. "Lady Vigard, with all due respect for your husband's service..."

The noblewoman raises one perfectly tweezed eyebrow. "Chancellor, forgive me, but I fear that my humble intellect fails to follow the twists and turns of your rhetoric — what does my husband have to do with any of this? Insofar as both parties agreed to have Lord Evernase and me serve as arbiters, allow me to return us to the problem at hand. Seeker Pentaghast told us her report was a fabrication, designed to reveal spies within the Inquisition. While I would counsel the Seeker to be more discerning in the sort of rumors she circulates, the problems the Inquisition has with its internal organization are not our affair. While I cannot fault you for your religious fervor or your desire to investigate every rumor of apostasy, chancellor, it is my opinion that the matter is quite simple. Either Lady Trevelyan is a threat, or she is not. And while I agree with you that an untrained mage can be dangerous, I, for one, have seen no confirmation of her being a mage in the first place."

"Have you not been paying attention, Lady Vigard?" Mother Agrippina's voice is bitter as vinegar. "All afternoon we have heard from witnesses from Therinfal, demonstrating plainly that the girl used magic. And, besides, surely your own eyes should furnish the necessary evidence: what do you call this mark on her hand? Or her ability to close the rifts? What else could she be but a mage? One whose magic caused—"

Lady Vigard pivots to the Chantry mother with an amiable smile that never makes it to the upper half of her face. "Have I mentioned that I had a son in the Kirkwall Circle, revered mother? Before it was annulled , of course. He was a kind, gentle lad and wrote regularly. From his letters, I have a passing understanding of the schools of magic, and I would venture that this mark fits none of them. But by all means, do not take a foolish old woman's word for it. Let us ask Madame de Fer, since we are lucky to have her present — Vivienne, looking lovely as always, would you come closer, dear?"

Margo watches the Iron Lady glide towards the dais with the grace of a well-fed cobra. "I wish it were under less unpleasant circumstances, Chantale. I fully support your assessment. I have had the opportunity to observe the magic of the mark, and it is fundamentally distinct from anything we know. It does not prove Evelyn to be a mage."

"Madame de Fer is a member of the Inquisition. Of course she would say this."

"Oh, let us ask some other mages, then. The elven apostate, where is he? Ah, yes. And the Tevinter lad. Young men, do come forward."

Margo would bet good money that the little noise Solas makes at the back of his throat is a growl, but he gets up and comes to stand next to Vivienne, a few feet behind Evie. Dorian saunters over from the opposite side of the room — he catches Margo's gaze and winks.

"Does this mark prove that Evelyn Trevelyan is a mage? Elf, what say you?"

"Whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark on the Herald's hand. The magic involved here is unlike any I have seen. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine any mage having such powers. Whatever the Herald is, I doubt the mark can serve as proof of anything but itself."

"And you would trust an elven apostate—"

"Certainly not, Chancellor, I propose we ask the Tevinter mage next. He is not formally a member, is he, Josephine?"

Roderick inflates like a puffer fish. "Are you mocking me, Lady Vigard?"

"Perish the thought. Lad?"

"Altus, if we are being technical. I would like to corroborate my colleagues' opinions. Whatever magic is contained in the mark bears no resemblance to even the most daring experiments I have witnessed in Tevinter — in case you happen to be interested in a comparative approach."

Margo suppresses a grin. Securing this Lady Vigard as the referee was pure genius — she wonders who should take the credit, Torquemada or Josie. Her money is on the ambassador.

"But it disproves nothing." The Chancellor turns an unhealthy shade of beet. "Like attracts like, as well we know. Perhaps whatever magic is contained in the mark was drawn to the girl because she herself is a mage."

"This is ridiculous, Chancellor, even for you. There were hundreds of actual mages at the Conclave!"

"Seeker Pentaghast, I will be grateful if you refrain from speaking out of turn." Evernase presses his lips into an irascible scowl. "Lady Vigard, you have made your point. I am disinclined to consider the mark as sufficient evidence to identify the accused as a mage. The mages can go sit." He waves his hand in dismissal. "In my opinion, there is a much simpler way to verify her status. A mage's reaction to the templar smite is well documented."

"We have witnesses suggesting that she is immune." Mother Agrippina glares down at Evie.

"We have witnesses who suggest that Lady Trevelyan arrived to Therinfal on the back of a high dragon and made demons dance a jig, revered mother. I for one am no longer in the mood for tall tales. Or witnesses. Could we have a volunteer, please?"

Margo watches Ser Barris grapple with the decision to offer his services, but another templar beats him to it. He's a tall, heavyset fellow with the ruddy complexion of someone who spends time outdoors and enjoys his wine and rich food. There is a cruel twist to his smirk as he steps forward. At the sight of him, Evie flinches — it's a small movement but still noticeable.

"Would be my pleasure," he drawls.

Lady Vigard observes the volunteer like he's something she stepped into. "What is your name, templar?"

"Ser Brinley, ma'am."

"I have very little patience for showmanship, Ser Brinley. Be done with it."

The templar strolls over to Evie, and Margo feels her muscles tense in fear. But before she can so much as blink, the armored bastard throws his arms to the sides and bellows. The telltale golden light bursts from him in an expanding circle that dissipates a half-dozen feet away from its armored epicenter.

Lady Vigard rolls her eyes and pretends to stifle a yawn. So much for no showmanship.

The crowd whispers as the occupants of the dais lean forward, watching for a reaction.

Evie remains standing. If she is affected, there are no indications of it.

"Well, there we have it. If she were a mage, she would be crumpled on the floor. Anything else you would like to verify, chancellor?" Lady Vigard beams her faux-amiable smile at the clerics.

"It disproves nothing, except for potentially corroborating some of the rumors Lord Evernase finds so far-fetched." Mother Agrippina interlaces her fingers and leans forward, every bit the turkey vulture. "We should test another one of them while we have the services of this soldier. Let us see if there is any basis to this talk of a curse that deflects misfortune. Ser Brinley, was it? Would you kindly hit the accused, please?"

Roderick has the decency to look a little shocked at this. "That is not... "

Ser Brinley never hesitates. Before Evie has so much as a chance to try to defend herself or deflect the blow, the templar backhands her, the gesture oddly casual — as if the armored asshat had long since made the task of hitting unarmed women part of his morning routine. He isn't wearing gloves, but the impact is violent enough without them. Evie's head snaps back, a spray of crimson droplets fanning out from her broken lip and painting a perversely neat half-circle on the stones. She stumbles and sways, and then her legs give out, and she collapses to the floor in a heap.

Commander Rutherford and Torquemada jump to their feet simultaneously. There is a knife in the spymaster's hand that was not there a second before.

"That is quite enough!" Lady Vigard looks utterly livid. "We will not devolve into-"

It all happens too fast. Lady Vigard doesn't get the chance to expound on whatever they risk devolving into, because suddenly the templar bellows, "Now!" He lunges for Evie, yanking her up by the hair. Four figures detach themselves from the crowd and take off at a dead run towards them. Two are wearing Chantry robes. Margo only has time to notice the man directly across from her. He is not young — perhaps in his late thirties, with patchy russet stubble and pockmarked skin. She spots a vicious-looking dagger in his left hand: its metal catches the reddish light filtering through the stained glass window — the window's mosaic the same design as the one in Evie's Fade cell.

"We've seen your foul magic, apostate bitch ! End her!"

Solas springs to his feet and in the next instant is shoved roughly back onto the bench by a templar who seems to have appeared from nowhere. "Keep in line, mage — don't let me do something you'll regret." And then the templar smites him. It is as if the invisible threads that animated the elf are severed, and he slumps against Margo, an eerie slackness to his features.

"Shit." Varric jumps up on the bench and reaches for Bianca in one fluid motion, but his fingers grasp empty air — weapons were not allowed into the nave. Except, apparently, for the would-be killers — and the spymaster — who disregarded the memo.

Margo does the obvious thing — since this particular templar is only wearing light armor and she is perfectly positioned for it, she leans back and kicks the bastard in the crotch. The laws of physics and his anatomy propel him downward with a howl. Cassandra bounds to the templar and encourages his earthbound trajectory with a swift elbow to the back of the neck.

Cole must have disregarded the no-weapons memo as well, because he is suddenly crouching next to the templar, dagger in hand.

"Wait! We will need to interrogate him!" Cassandra's warning is a second too late. A pool of crimson spreads over the polished gray granite of the chantry floor.

Cole vanishes and reappears in the center of the room, which has a scuffle of its own underway. Commander Rutherford, armed with a hefty-looking candleholder, is bludgeoning one of the assailants. The rest of them are variously engaged with Ser Barris, Torquemada, and now Cole. On the other side of the room, Dorian and Vivienne are both stirring faintly on the floor — victims of smites — so there is no hope of help from that side. Margo spots Blackwall elbowing his way to the front of the crowd, but his progress is impeded by a mass of confused gawkers, all trying to get a better look at what is happening ahead. She is still holding Solas upright — the elf turns out to be heavier than he appears. He comes back to himself with a start and bares his teeth in a feral snarl. "The Herald!" he hisses, tries to get to his feet, but his body isn't obeying yet.

The templar still has Evie. She struggles against him, but her kicks to his armored shins produce no effect. He is unarmed, but it does not stop him — with a scream of rage, he grabs hold of her hand, twisting it at an unnatural angle as if he is trying to dislocate it.

As it turns out, this is the last mistake he makes. The mark flares to life. Ser Brinley stumbles back in surprise and briefly releases his captive. Above him, under the soaring dome of the nave, the sound of cracking plaster.

In the next instant, the templar is crushed under an intricately ornate chandelier.

The violence stops as suddenly as it erupted, and, in the wake of the deafening clatter of the falling light fixture, the hall descends into shocked silence.

None of the aspiring murderers are alive.

"Well, then. Commander, Lady Nightingale, kindly regain your seats." The noblewoman's voice quivers only slightly. Margo decides that she would like to be Lady Vigard when she grows up. "We will deal with this in an orderly fashion. I will not have a stampede. If there are more would-be assassins in the crowd, kindly do step forward."

There must be more of them — more templars who were in on the plot, judging by the coordinated smites — but none make themselves known.

"Do you see now?" Mother Agrippina is flushed with a kind of transcendent, zealous rage. "She caused Ser Brinley's death! I know you are a mage, Trevelyan. An abomination! Your very existence an offense to the Maker!"

Slowly, as if something animated by invisible clockwork, Evelyn Trevelyan rises to her feet.

"To me, Templars! Smite her!" Spittle flies from the Revered Mother's lips. "End her before she causes more deaths! Such a thing has no right to live!"

Evie's hair, dull and frizzy with the grime of bedridden confinement, hangs over her face in limp strands, but beneath the long fringe Margo spots a flash of cobalt. She shudders. Something has changed. Pieces, jagged and broken, are rearranging themselves into unfamiliar patterns. For a second, the young woman reminds her of one of those ghostly, ghastly specters that Japanese horror films tend to represent as adolescent girls in long, grimy nightgowns. Her mind flashes to Dorian's nightmarish spells, the inarticulate dread of a world in disarray, a void, a chaos so profound it has no name or even the possibility of language.

The crowd stills, as if all assembled decide to hold their breath at once.

Evie looks up, her eyes a dark, blazing blue. Her lips, bloody and swollen from the templar's blow, move in an inaudible incantation.

A subtle tremor snakes its way up Margo's calfs, and it takes her a few seconds to realize that it isn't her trembling, but the ground itself. And then, with a deep, almost subsonic rumble, the paving stones in the center of the hall begin to move.

"What is happening?" someone cries out. Around the room, the sounds of bodies shifting, deciding whether to flee or come for a closer look. At least Solas seems to have regained his faculties. His eyebrows are drawn in a deep frown, but his fingers move, and the misty coolness of the barrier spell brushes Margo's skin with its iodine tang. At the opposite side of the hall, Dorian and Vivienne, now upright, follow suit with their own barriers.

"Well, shit." Varric swears, almost pensively. "And here I thought this couldn't get any worse." Cassandra tenses, adopting a defensive stance — or at least as much of one as her unarmored state allows. The dwarf and the Seeker pivot slightly, unconsciously, to stand back to back — a habit born of the subtle intimacies of the battlefield.

And then, abruptly, Evie finds her voice. It carries and reverberates, sweet, haunting like the call of some small nocturnal bird — and all the more terrible for its sweetness. Margo's breath catches. There is no mistaking her words for what they are. A prayer.

"Maker, though I am but one, I have called in Your Name,  
And those who come to serve will know Your Glory."

With a groan, a large stone plate in the center of the room wobbles — tentatively, almost shyly at first — and then flies five feet into the air, crashes down, and splinters into fragments with a cloud of mineral dust and a bang like a mortar shot. Those closest to it recoil, faces twisted with fear.

"They will see what can be gained,  
And though we are few against the wind, we are Yours."

A gust — cold and dry and breathing of the sepulcher — blasts through the hall, buffeting hems and tapestries and blowing Evie's hair away from her face to reveal her expression. It is calm and severe, ethereal in its otherworldly stillness, like one of those old icons of saints Baba kept on her strangely eclectic altar, their solemnly watchful almond-shaped eyes always following you in unfathomable judgement.

At Evie's back, unpleasant noises emanate from below the surface: something dry and brittle snapping, something viscous and clumpy churning — sounds of offal hitting the concrete floor of an abattoir. Something being dragged. A sickening sort of shuffling.

Margo pushes down a sudden wave of nausea.

"Though I am flesh, Your Light is ever present,  
And those I have called, they remember,  
And they shall endure."

In the gaping hole of the grave — and Margo's historian training kindly supplies the only possible conclusion, that the temple has been built atop a charnel house or a mass burial — a flicker of white. A hand, its flesh partially eaten away by decomposition and the rest mummified into a dark, leathery claw, grips the edge and gropes about, blind and inhumanly fast, with a sound like rodent feet scuttling on tile.

A strange, itchy sense of dislocation pulls at Margo's insides, coursing through her body in the dull ache of fever.

"I shall sing with them the Chant, and all will know,  
We are Yours, and none shall stand before us."

Evie's voice, melodic as a silver bell, carries on the putrid wind.

Leliana, her expression a strange mask of exultation and terror, backs away towards the dais. Josephine is pale beneath her brown skin, her hands clasped together in front of her heart. Cullen considers the candleholder in his hands, his scarred knuckles white against the metal, and then he watches with a mixture of horror and awe as Evie steps forward. Her hand glows green, but the mark seems like such a minor matter at that moment. In the rays of the setting sun that filter through the stained glass, Evie's head appears crowned in a fiery nimbus.

"Though all before me is shadow,  
Yet shall the Maker be my guide."

The dead erupt from the grave with the speed of cockroaches. For a surreal moment, Margo is struck by a sense of ridiculous annoyance at the fact that so many zombie movies got it wrong. The hollow-eyed, partially rotten things congregating in a swaying, rippling tide around Evie do not groan, or growl, or make any kind of sound beyond the involuntary noises of their decayed carnality. They do not mill about aimlessly like the undead shits in the Foul Mire. They do not gnash their teeth or try to eat anyone's brains. Their movements are economical and purposeful, almost botanical yet fast, like so many sunflowers filmed in timelapse, turning as one with the light. Vaguely, Margo wonders at their partial state of decomposition. They're remarkably well-preserved.

Pain so sharp that Margo's vision blurs to white around the edges spikes through her head. She sways and grips at the bench to keep herself from pitching forward.

"I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond."

The bodies of the would-be murderers, still strewn around Evie, begin to twitch, their movements jerky and unnatural, as if something is pulling them on like ill-fitting garments. The cadaver of Ser Brinley crawls its way from underneath the twisted metal of the chandelier, leaving a trail of gore behind it, and stumbles to its feet with the wobbly uncertainty of a newborn calf. Its head has been partially severed and flops to the side, attached to the neck only by a narrow strip of torn flesh. The former templar takes a hold of the lolling, bloodied globe, rips it off the rest of the way in a quick twist, and then drops it between its feet with a sickening smack.

Someone screams. At the back of the room, a mass exodus begins, the audience trying to flee the premises.

Margo wipes at a warm trickle under her nose, her mind flailing, fracturing. Her hand comes away slick with red. The pain that washes over her has no equivalent. It is as if her insides are being peeled apart in layers. She's startled to realize the strangled moan is hers. The world careens off kilter, but then stops, rights itself. She looks up through the fog. Solas is holding her upright, his expression close to panic. She can feel the short warm bursts of his breath against her cheek. On the other side of him, Cole — who wasn't there a second ago — is paler even than usual.

"She shines darkly. She pulls. I can't... It hurts..."

Margo feels herself being maneuvered towards the young man- qua -spirit.

"Cole, you must get out of range. The both of you. Please!" Solas's tone is clipped.

"She pulls. I can't..."

"Now, Cole. Please!"

"Not safe, not far enough. Too hard..."

"Now!"

Margo isn't sure what happens next. A feeling of fabric being dragged across her face, a wobble to the world, as if someone forcibly rearranges the system of coordinates, and then she finds herself some twenty feet in the air, on what she identifies, vaguely, as some kind of decorative ledge. She clings to Cole, and he to her, an odd pair, a strange Hansel and Gretel. But the awful, incomprehensible pain of being pulled apart from within is gone, and Margo tucks her face against Cole's shoulder and lets out a relieved sob.

"Maker's Breath, put an end to her! Stop this blasphemy!" Below them, Mother Agrippina is shaking with terror and fury.

From her perch, Margo sees the dead turn towards the cleric as if a single organism, hollow sockets holding no malice or anger, only the bottomless, cosmic indifference of empty space.

And then they swarm.

The room explodes in screams and hurried movements, but before violence can break out in earnest, Evie raises her hand, index and middle fingers extended in a perverse benediction.

"Stop!" Her voice is smooth, polished silver." For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light."

The corpses come to an abrupt halt.

"Please!" Margo's head snaps towards the plea. Solas, his features strained with a mixture of anguish and revulsion barely contained beneath the fragments of a mask too costly to hold in place, fixes Evie with a gaze that is one shade away from supplication. In the painted rays of the setting sun, his eyes flash amethyst. "You are drawing spirits to animate the dead! Please, Herald, stop! Before you bind them to the corpses..."

Evie looks at Solas with that strange, severe indifference, as if balancing some incomprehensible scales and finding him abstractly lacking. She turns her gaze towards the stained glass mosaic of the beheaded woman.

"And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost," she declaims coolly. Her hand, still raised, slowly drifts down, and, at the end of its trajectory, hangs limply at her side.

In the deafening silence that descends over the hall, a single whisper rings out like a gunshot. " Death mage."

"Do you see now !" Mother Agrippina appears to have regained her faculties. Unsurprisingly, the first one to return is the capacity to spew venom.

The dead snap to attention, pivoting their heads in the direction of the voice. Mother Agrippina recoils.

"You find this frightful, revered mother?" Evie's eyes, huge and blazing with a kind of otherworldly triumph, flick over Cullen, skim over Leliana and Josephine, and then fasten on the clerics. Her chest rises and falls rapidly. She bites out the next words. "Oh, but so you should . You wish me an incompetent mage, so that the suffering I could cause can confirm your own necessity. You eagerly await that I succumb to the promises of demons. You would brand me, muzzle me. Yet you greedily demand a demonstration of power?" A nagging sense of the uncanny claws at Margo's perception. If Evie ever had problems with language, she no longer does. There is a melodic, sing-song quality to her voice. "I hope this satisfies. It is not mine . I claim it not. For I am but a humble tool in the hands of our Maker."

Evie draws a hissing breath and raises her hand. " O Creator, see me kneel. " Her back is ramrod straight, her head held high, defiant. An ugly bruise is spreading over her cheek.

The dead take a slow, lumbering step backward.

" For I walk only where You would bid me ."

A collective shudder goes through the corpses. A stumble, then two, then several more, as if they are being pulled by invisible strings, their progression independent of the way they are facing.

" Stand only in places You have blessed. "

The swarm ebbs and sways at the edge of their collective grave, their crumbling, desiccated faces twisting towards Evie at unnatural, impossible angles. The fresher corpses mix in with their mummified brethren, flashes of red and white in the mass of leathery brown.

"Si _n_ g only the words You place in my throat."

With a rustle of moribund skin and sinew, they collapse backward, discarded, gristle, skin and bone crumbling back into the hollow of the earth. For a second, before the vision dissipates, Margo can feel another invisible swarm released from the harbor of dead flesh. Spirits. They scatter but do not manifest into hostility. Below them, she sees Solas's shoulders relax in almost palpable relief. One spirit, with a texture like vapor and cobwebs, soars upward, and brushes against Margo's legs, just on the other side of the visible. She is pretty sure it's one of those wispy numbers that spews green ectoplasm. Margo draws back and Cole's grip on her forearm tightens, stabilizing her on the ledge. Solas looks up and catches her gaze, and Margo's nose fills with the scent of the ocean. Apparently, the elf remembers her tendency to plummet to her death.

"What accursed demon taught you such unholy magic, wretched child?" Mother Agrippina shrieks.

For a few long heartbeats, Evie simply observes the cleric with an indecipherable expression.

"Andraste did, revered mother."

* * *

 _Thank you so much for reading, and for your kudos and feedback! 3_

 _This chapter was brought to you by a public service announcement: if you live in a place where the dead have a tendency to come back to life, stock up on aspen stakes and don't cut corners on corpse disposal._

 _Next up: Aftershocks, more revelations, and tests of loyalty._

[Author's note: a special shout out for those of you who are leaving reviews - especially as guests, since I can't very well respond to them through this site. Please know that I read every one of them and appreciate them enormously. I'm a little behind on answering, but will do so when the holiday madness calms down. Happy New Year!]


	56. Chapter 56: The Burden of Proof

_In which Cole offers some unsettling insights_

* * *

Later (much later), after Haven burns; after she adds the terms "Blight" and "Darkspawn" to her ever-expanding cabinet of dreadful curiosities; later, when the sight of the dead bloated with frost turns into a bleak routine; later, huddled into a bed of fir needles and furs, listening to her companion's breath deepen with sleep, her skin still tingling with the ghost of his touch; later, when there is nothing but the indifferent howls of the wind outside and the leaden weight of a choice that cannot be unmade... later, Margo will think of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. She will ponder that strange creature, the angel of history forever locked into its retrospective gaze, and the curse of recognizing the world-historical shift as it happens — that awful feeling of events etching themselves into a future yet to unfold, where the present swells with its own unavoidable but unknowable trajectory. Later, long past the point of no return, in the predawn darkness of a lost mountain pass, with hours of fretful restlessness behind her, moments before her lover pulls her closer with a soft, sleepy whisper, his lips trailing a path from the hollow beneath her ear to the tilde of her clavicle and his eyes dark with the promise of a temporary reprieve from the tyranny of their respective ghosts; later, in the dead spaces between more immediate thoughts, it will not be the risen corpses that she remembers most vividly. Nor will her mind summon the memory of the templars, Ser Barris their self-appointed leader, who surround Evelyn Trevelyan in a protective ring of steel — a jagged crown of flaming swords for Andraste's Chosen, one that the Herald will wear henceforth and into the pages of history. No. What will stay with her is the look that passes between Leliana and Cassandra — a silent exchange distorted into infinity, like the endless hallway between two opposing mirrors. In that moment, at the fork in the path that will alter their world, the two women appear to Margo as they truly are: two halves of the same playing card.

But all of this comes later.

The last rays of the winter sun wink out of existence, and the nave fills with shadows and the unsteady flicker of a thousand candles. The silence is broken by the rhythmic clanking of steel, as templars one by one file after Ser Barris into a circular formation around Evie. Ser Barris gestures with his hand, and his comrades in arms as one take a knee, their heads bent low, their fists over their hearts.

"We hereby pledge our lives to the Herald of Andraste." A chorus of voices, synchronized in a deceptively simple oath. Whispers in the audience, incredulous looks.

Evie asks them to rise, and they obey, pivoting outward, their backs to the young woman. Margo counts nine silent sentinels, five men and four women. Two are around Evie's age, but most are older. Ser Barris looks like he might be in his early thirties. The oldest templar — wide, stocky, with a shock of ash-gray hair sharply offset by her bronze skin — appears closer to fifty. Ser Barris and Commander Cullen exchange a brief nod of acknowledgement.

"Templars, do not abase yourselves before yet another false prophet who would not hesitate—"

"Revered Mother Agrippina." The spymaster's voice slices off the rest of the utterance. "You have forfeited any right to speak in these hallowed halls."

The cleric's lips thin out into a bloodless line. "I represent the Chantry's authority here, and I will not allow this awful little creature—"

A small smile touches Torquemada's lips, but it could be the effect of the light. "Tell me, revered mother... I cannot help but wonder. Do you have any previous acquaintance with Lady Trevelyan?"

"What exactly are you suggesting?"

"With all due respect, revered mother..." The Commander's tone makes a mockery of the superficially polite formula. Margo watches the former templar carefully set his weaponized candelabra on the ground and march towards the dais. He is holding a small scrap of something white between thumb and forefinger. He hands it over to the spymaster with a curt nod and a stony expression. "I recommend you keep quiet."

Josephine comes to stand next to Torquemada, leans in to see the writing on the shred of vellum, and lets out what is undoubtedly a very carefully calibrated exclamation of shock.

The spymaster turns to Cullen with a raptorial nod. "Commander, you know what to do." Ice creeps down Margo's spine. The irony, of course, is that the vellum could be a recipe for rice pudding, for all it would matter. She supposes that this is what Torquemada meant by The Game.

Cullen raises his hand. A pair of soldiers steps forward. "Mother Agrippina, you are under arrest for conspiracy against the Herald of Andraste and the Inquisition, and for instigating an attempted assassination."

A collective gasp rustles over the crowd.

Cassandra joins Cullen by the dais, as dark as her shadow in the unsteady glow.

"Slander! You can't prove anything! You have no authority here!" the cleric sputters.

The Seeker's tone is glacial. "Since the Inquisition was instituted under the orders of the Divine, we do, in fact, have the authority."

From there, it is as if a wobbly, rickety mechanism suddenly and inexplicably sputters to life, its internal clockwork snapping into gear. Evie, still flanked by her retinue of templars, whom Margo baptizes The Nine, is one of the first to leave the premises. The crowd parts in front of her like the proverbial sea. After that, Cassandra declares Haven to be under the equivalent of martial law and coordinates the peaceful (if somewhat confused) dispersal of the straggling gawkers, with a little friendly help from Blackwall. The ambassador smoothes over the nobles' ruffled feathers — Lady Vigard for her part appears perfectly collected, if somewhat put out, and in no need of reassurances. Lord Evernase looks like he swallowed a lemon. The ambassador ushers them to their quarters. Cullen continues to oversee the arrest of Mother Agrippina, with a visibly shaken Chancellor Roderick trying — unsuccessfully — to make himself invisible. In the end, the chancellor exits the nave alongside Torquemada, whose corvid gaze takes him in with new and unpleasant interest. Margo almost feels sorry for the bastard.

No one seems to pay Margo and Cole much attention. Solas casts her a brief but pointed look — one that seems to be either a promise of a later conversation or a request for one — but he falls in step with Varric and exits with the others.

At length, once the nave is deserted, Cole shifts them to ground level.

"It isn't over," he says, his eyes fleeting from object to object as if he is unable to focus on anything for too long. "They do not believe she is possible. They need to think she is more than what's there. That she is one with the many."

Margo considers his words. Part of what makes the kid's speech so confusing is that he uses too many pronouns, apparently confident that his interlocutor will automatically hold the same context in mind — as if language is nothing but an afterthought for him and he expects meaning to carry in some other way. He really does remind her of Goran — minus the accent. Still. There are patterns to his linguistic idiosyncrasies that Margo is beginning to identify. When they were in the Fade, Cole referred to spirits as "the many." And aside from that, it is fairly clear whom "she" stands for.

"The advisors will think Evie an abomination?" She pauses, recollecting the eery changes. "Is she?"

"There was no magic, then there was. They can't understand. Some treasures must stay hidden until their time arrives. He knows about these things but will not speak, because to think them the same would change everything. I can try to tell them, but they won't listen to me. So you will explain. They will want to kill you because having to unknow hurts. I'm sorry. There are other worlds than these, Margo. "

She starts. Cole's tone — wistful, ironic, a little too quiet — is a perfect imitation of her brother's. Nobody but Jake ever quoted that particular line at her. But then, the meaning of the words penetrates through the shock of recognition.

"What do you mean, I will have to explain? Explain what?"

"She pulled you before she knew she could. Before I tried to make things better. The rift helped, I think. And the green on your hands. The root made you lighter, easier to draw. It is too far, you see. This body is too heavy. He could not carry it with him, so he left it behind, like an old abandoned shell. "

Margo frowns, her mind churning slowly around the vaguely familiar utterance — it is distorted just enough to make identification slower. And then, of course, she remembers. Cole is paraphrasing a line from The Little Prince .

"Where did you hear that?" she asks, and she regrets it immediately — her voice is sharper than she means it to be, and the boy flinches at her tone. "Sorry. Sorry, Cole. It's just... it's from my world."

"Yes. It's what you know. It's just not on the surface. Other things are on the surface now. Do you want to know which ones?" Before she can try to stop her mind from gleeful self-sabotage, Cole continues. "He thinks about it too, you know. The thoughts float up, unbidden. Distracted, he tries to stop, but it has been a long time and ... I don't know why it's always up against the wall, though."

Margo groans. It's one of those "don't think about the pink elephant" problems. Well. At least, she's pretty sure she knows exactly whom the third-person pronoun is pointing to in this context. Good to know that she and Solas are in solidarity. She shakes her head vehemently, trying to dislodge the imagery that blooms to life in her mind's eye.

"Oh... is that not uncomfortable? Wait, you changed the image. What is that pink thing?"

"With any luck, it's an elephant. At least, I hope. Cole, please just..." She clears her throat. "Can you read anyone like that?"

"Sometimes. Most people have too many voices all speaking over each other. It's terribly noisy. I hear the ones that speak the loudest. Desire. Fear. Anger. Pain." Cole pivots to face her. His wide-brimmed hat casts deep shadows over most of his face — only his pale chin and overwide mouth remain plainly visible. "Can I stay with you? Until they come for us? I won't be a bother at all. You won't even notice me."

She sees it then, despite his strange, grating otherness and mortifying mind-reading abilities. Margo's heart constricts with that odd sense of familiarity. Cole is as much a stranger to this world as she is, and just as it is for her, there is no ready-made place for him within it. Another castaway, adrift on some unfathomable cosmic current.

"On one condition: you don't give voice to everything I'm thinking. Or anyone else, for that matter. I'll talk to Master Adan. But didn't you pick somewhere to stay already? Haven's not that small — I'm sure there are more comfortable places than the apothecary."

Cole turns away, and begins to walk slowly towards the exit. "So many people. Thoughts so loud I can hear them through walls. Maker, that thing gives me the creeps. Won't it go away, already? Solas doesn't mind me. And Varric. But they hold their pain, spilling none — rainwater in a rusty barrel. Old, loud aches, rooted deep. I can't fix that. I'd rather be where I can help."

Margo falls in step beside him. She is sorely tempted to pry — though, of course, the idea that both Varric and Solas lug around some kind of unresolved Troubled Past does not surprise her in the least. She has long since identified Varric's witty barbs and sarcastic nonchalance as primarily camouflage. As for the elf, he wears his melancholy on his sleeve.

"Cole, you said they would be coming for us. Can you elaborate?"

They emerge into the wintry dusk, and a sharp gust of wind cuts right through Margo's coat. She casts Cole a quick look. The kid's leathers are tattered and thin, but he appears uniquely unbothered by the climate. Margo does not doubt for a second that the boy is, in fact, a spirit. Which begs the question — how did he come about his physical form, exactly?

"I touched a body once. I wanted to help but couldn't. So I became him, took his face. You need fingers to open cages."

Margo halts, frowning up at the boy. He is long and lanky, and at least a head taller than her. "You mean you possessed a dead body?"

"No. I wanted to look like this, so I did. It's what I could imagine becoming. The ones who wear the dead lose themselves. The shape is all wrong." His eyes go out of focus. "It's all right. You're not that, either. You didn't take anything that wasn't freely given, and you paid for it in full."

"Wait, wait..."

Cole shakes his head, his tone taking on the high plaintive notes of sudden urgency. "You can ask later. There isn't much time — their thoughts ripen as we speak. You should get your things. The book where you write. It might help. They will want to know if she shares her body with one of the many. They will think Envy. Still fearing it, though it's gone. Can't see what's inside."

"Slow down, Cole. Why do they need you — or me — to set things straight?"

"They don't need me. I can hear, but what's the point if they don't listen?"

"Solas can see inside, right? And Dorian? What about Vivienne?"

"Solas can. Dorian only sees if something is out of place. Vivienne won't look. You must be willing to offer something in order to look. A better trade, a promise." Cole shakes his head. "She would never offer."

Margo exhales through her teeth. Of course. "And of the three, Vivienne is the one whose word is likely to carry most weight. All right. Correct me if I'm wrong. What you're saying is this: the advisors will eventually conclude that Evie is possessed. It is logical — Occam's razor. And none of the people who can testify to the contrary are sufficiently credible witnesses. Not in the face of... well, whatever it is she did. And... this is where I come in, somehow? Because of how I ended up in your world?"

"Yes. You came before. You will have to tell them what you are.

Margo's gaze drifts to the jagged line of the mountains. Above it, the Breach churns and phosphoresces, vaguely reminiscent, with its giant levitating boulders, of a cosmic-sized clogged toilet.

"The problem is that I have absolutely no way of proving what I am either."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by ironic process theory. Don't think about the pink elephant._

 _Next up: Revelations, speculations, and a whole lot of politics._


	57. Chapter 57: In the Pines

_In which Margo recruits witnesses._

As always, so many thanks for your reading eyes and reviews. In case you've missed Amund (I have a very soft spot in my heart for Amund), he's back. Enjoy.

* * *

With Cole as Margo's silent companion, getting past the Tweedles is child's play. Predictably, the two goons are absorbed by an argumentative if rather monosyllabic game of dice while pretending to guard Haven's back door. It's a good thing the Inquisition doesn't seem important enough for anyone to bother attacking it. Margo wonders briefly how they will get the gate to open without drawing the idiots' attention, but it turns out her speculations are moot — Cole simply shifts himself through the palisade, with Margo in tow.

"How did you do that?" she asks. There is an aftertaste of wood chips on her tongue.

The boy shrugs. "They call it a 'Fade step.' It's like that, but different. I never step into the Fade. Neither do they. Not really. Like wrapping yourself in a blanket so that the monsters don't notice. The water pistol won't work. You can't beat blankets over the head for protection. "

It's probably thirty seconds of her mind chasing its own tail until a label for the reference finally percolates up. Margo has the uncanny and very unpleasant feeling that she is beginning to lose pieces of her old world. The contours of her intellectual map are becoming fuzzy, distant. What is he citing? A Bradbury short story? No, too playful. Although she is fairly certain she has the time period and genre right. More like a Robert Sheckley. Ghost V ?

"Cole, are you pulling these from my memories, or from somewhere else?"

"They are memories. Shared, splintered, spread like a dusting of frost over grass. Not just yours."

He doesn't offer a further explanation, and his expression makes Margo reluctant to ask for clarification. Profound sorrow chills his features, and any illusion she might have harbored that Cole is simply an odd, awkward young man shatters — his mournfulness is so primal it verges on elemental. They trudge along the snow-crusted road in silence. When he finally speaks again, they are about twenty yards from the sequoia look-alike... and the cache Margo hopes is still concealed between its roots.

"I'm sorry. I was upset, but not at you." Cole plucks a small glossy leaf from an evergreen shrub they pass and starts twirling it between thumb and forefinger. As she watches him fidget, it occurs to Margo that he is never entirely still, as if perpetual flux is his default state. An odd thought — that perhaps he finds this body uncomfortably heavy — flashes across the horizon of her attention.

He tucks the leaf into his pocket. "These words don't fit. Like another man's armor, chafing, tight in all the wrong places. Your language is very new, stark, crisp, with no soft spaces in between. Black and white. Good and bad. Me and you and he and they. It separates, scatters, sunders. I try to hold the words together, but they run away. It isn't your fault that you hear difference where there isn't. You could borrow my words, but they're empty, too, nothing on the other end of them anymore." He sighs. His voice grows wistful and a little breathless, and, in that moment, he reminds her of a kid awestruck by some unfathomable mystery of the cosmos, before that sense of wonder is flattened out by the dreary business of growing up. "It used to sing all the elsewheres the same, voices like vines twining round and round the trunk to reach the light. It's nice to hear the other songs, even if it's just echoes now. You remember, so they're louder."

It is Margo's turn to postpone an answer. It doesn't help that spending time with Cole exacerbates her mind's self-reflexive function. She gets lost in the process of watching herself think — and then watching herself watch herself think — down and down the rabbit hole. She wonders whether Cole used the tree metaphor for her benefit — something about it reminds her of Jake once again. Perhaps it's the image of the axis mundi, the axle around which all imaginable worlds come into being. She tries to brush the sudden sharp heartache aside, unsure when she began to think of her brother exclusively in the past tense. Right. More immediate problems. One step at a time. Bland clichés to the rescue. Her eyes are just stinging from the cold.

"Autumn wind in his hair, the taste of crisp apples. He finishes the other half of your jokes. I can't give him back, but I can make you forget."

Margo shakes her head, swallows around a lump in her throat, and kneels between the roots. She sets her pack and a sheathed Molly on the snow next to her. The choking sensation passes slowly.

At least Quartermaster Threnn kindly parted with her possessions with only minimal grumbling and a scribbled signature. Overwrought bureaucracy, chugging along, momentous events and potential armageddon notwithstanding. Her fingers brush briefly against the hilt of her weapon.

Stab? Stab stab?

"Hush, Molly, not yet."

A wave of disappointment.

"Oh! May I speak with your friend?"

Margo eyes Cole cautiously. "Fine. But just for a quick chat." A half-formed thought about the absurdity of feeling threatened by Cole's intentions towards her dagger tries to bridge the threshold of Margo's conscious awareness. She quickly hands over the weapon, haft first. The last thing she needs is to develop an unhealthy codependent attachment to fifteen inches of pointy metal. "If you manage to figure out why it talks, please let me know."

While the young man is occupied with Molly, Margo gathers her books and the rest of her paraphernalia. Sera's things are gone. She finds a small circular object with a grease-stained note folded around it. The mystery parcel turns out to be a small cake — hard as a rock and nibbled on one side. She reads the writing on the scrap of parchment. "Better with tea. 'Cause teeth." Margo grins, rewraps the cookie, and stuffs it into her pack with the rest of her belongings.

Cole is still communing with the dagger with an expression of abstract concentration, so Margo takes the opportunity to lend some mental verbiage to her half-baked plan. Although half-baked is a vast exaggeration: the plan, if she is to pursue the culinary analogy, is still in the early stages of domesticating wheat.

Still, it would behoove her to think of a strategy, and quickly. If the idea of getting herself killed on the basis of Maile's past choices is frustrating, disappointing, and inexplicably guilt-inducing — like she is letting the other woman down, somehow — the prospect of execution on account of being an annoying alien interloper who challenges the local intellectual status quo offends her to the core. It would be so damn predictable, for one thing. Not to mention that her success or failure is potentially part of a longer causal chain, one that implicates Evie. And whatever implicates Evie has world-historical significance, quite possibly beyond Thedas, or whatever local-deity-specified-as-the-Maker-forsaken-planet hosts this particular geopolitical entity. What was it that Cole said? Something about singing together. Trees, vines. Roots. Roots that made her body lighter. Cryptic deployment of flora aside, it all seems to point to a connection between her world and this one — if she were to theorize, based on the evidence furnished by the accursed Brother Rufus (may the belladonna-munching bastard not rest in peace) — the Fade is more than a solely local phenomenon. Or it used to be. At some point.

And then there is the problem of what sort of perverse asshat soaked the blasted manuscript with a poison that might have not actually existed in her world.

Medieval monks. A pox on all of them.

Margo frowns and, with a mental kick, gets her mind back on more practical rails. She stares at the snow beneath her feet, unseeing. The task of proving that she is an outworlder, to use Amund's felicitous term, is sandwiched between two sides of a paradox. On the one end, statements she might make to this effect could be easily dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic — it never ends well for the fellow who claims to be coming from "a galaxy far, far away." And, on the other end, evincing knowledge that does not match Maile's persona could easily be taken as evidence of abominable status. What is the likelihood that a culture steeped in the fear of demons would simply accept a "take me to your leader" request at face value and not immediately execute whoever was making it, just to be on the safe side? Which are you going to believe: Chantry doctrine and your own experience, or the ravings of a suspicious elf?

She needs to approach the problem from a different angle. Facts — historical or otherwise — are the product of sociopolitical processes (which is to say, of whoever has the bigger army, more wealth, and the ideological apparatus to churn out the history books.) Right. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. What she needs to do is manufacture a social fact. And for that, she needs to line up witnesses. The principles of the jury should apply here as well — in theory, it should not matter that the witnesses are individually unreliable, only that they are unreliable in different ways.

Margo finds herself scowling at the darkening forest. She doesn't like this idea one bit. It isn't like she is particularly rich in allies. Calling in favors — and putting people whom she is tentatively beginning to think of as her friends on the spot — is... well, distasteful for one thing. A sure way to alienate them, for another. But it's not like she has any material proof of what she was before she inherited Maile's body and complicated biography. Her past specialization leaves her with limited options: with the right chemicals and some experimentation, she might be able to reconstruct the formula for gunpowder, but impressive as a big bang might be, it would be about the last thing Thedas needs.

Do they work glass? She might be able to restore Galileo's compound microscope schematic from memory — the Smithsonian had a gorgeous collection on the history of microscopy that she used in a piece she co-published a few years back — and then it would just be a matter of finding a skilled glassmaker with a taste for tinkering. The stained glass in the Chantry was impressive craftsmanship, but she hasn't seen anyone wearing corrective lenses — do they fix eyesight with magic or alchemy, or are all of her local contacts simply exceptionally blessed in the vision department? Are they experimenting with magnification? Perhaps the dwarves are — Genitivi's doorstopper did mention their facility with technology.

Margo shakes her head. She'll burn that bridge when she crosses it. Though if she survives this — any of this — she is going to procure herself a microscope. As far as life goals are concerned, this one seems better than most. Then she can take a peek at all those plants, creaturely remains, poisonous lichens — and maybe even lyrium. And then , if only she could nudge someone in the direction of spectroscopy, spectrophotometry would be right around the corner, give or take a century, depending on whose device you take to be the first. And with a spectrophotometer, even a simple, early model, chemical analysis of organic compounds would be one lightning rune and a UV-Vis lamp away... wait a second... unless mages can produce light in the ultraviolet spectrum? She'll have to propose this to Dorian... If there is a mage she can sweet talk into questionable scientific experiments, it would be him. In fact, she has no reason to think they're not already doing advanced research, just with a different set of tools. Still. A microscope would be handy.

"Cole?" Margo asks, forcibly tearing herself from her musings. Her feet are rapidly turning numb with cold. The boy hands her the dagger, and she quickly sheaths it. "Did you two have a nice chat?"

"It is very old. Made in the Stone, before they stopped folding Children into weapons. Though they never did stop, just told themselves they did. Be careful. I don't think it's very nice."

Margo shudders. She has the vague sense that Cole is speaking about dwarves — at least that interpretation is vastly preferable to whatever other ways of weaponizing children Thedas might have devised. Still, folding living beings into daggers doesn't bode well. "So, not a trapped spirit?" she asks uneasily.

Cole shakes his head. "It used to be in a body, but it liked to hurt people. They put it inside a blade, so someone else could hurt with it."

She liked it better when it was just "Molly" — though playing ostrich with an enchanted and possibly malevolent dagger seems uniquely unwise. "All right, I'll try to be cautious. In the meantime, there is a friend I think we should see."

The search doesn't take long.

"Listen for someone who is intensely homesick and thinks everyone he meets is an idiot," she tells Cole by way of guidance.

"But I already know Solas." The expression he offers is disconcertingly blank.

When the sudden fit of snorting laughter dies down, Margo puzzles over her own amusement. Is Solas's perennial melancholia a species of nostalgia? If so, for what sort of lost home? She takes a closer look at Cole. It's not quite a smile, but something about the crinkling at the corners of his eyes...

"Wait, was that an intentional joke?"

Cole looks impassive. "You thought it first."

"No, I didn't! All right. Look for someone who thinks that all lowlanders are idiots."

By the time they come upon the clearing, the sky is a rich, inky blue. Only the upper half of the tawny moon is visible beyond the treeline.

The campsite looks well-lived-in. The fur tent is conical, with at least two layers of hide and a flap door of heavy felt. Strips of meat are drying over a long fire, the two parallel logs crackling invitingly. A narrow plume of steam rises from the teakettle, milky white against the rapidly thickening shadows.

Amund is sitting on a stump stool next to the flames, bone needle and sinew thread in hand. He is patching up a pair of worn sheepskin trousers.

" Luzzil spinna ," he greets without lifting his head from his work. "Still alive. Done with spinning in circles?" He looks up, notices Cole, and bows low, bending at the waist, dignified yet deferential. "You honor me with your presence, Compassion."

Margo's gaze darts to Cole. Of course! The knowledge of his nature falls into place with the uncanny sensation of it having been there all along.

"Just Cole now. And I don't want to honor, I want to help." His gaze grows distant. "They bear the names the others give them but keep theirs secret. They guide the vanishing and greet the barely formed as an old friend, singing sameness. Tender tending, a year in the re|making, they help it find the ground to become itself again." Cole crouches next to Amund, all elbows and bony knees. It is the first time Margo sees the old Avvar look discomfited. "I know. You cannot offer moving as one in the being|with, but you leave room to be|across without be|coming other|than. Thank you. What your people do for the many... It helps. You can't fix it, but you know it's broken. You make the rubble livable."

Amund nods pensively and stares at the fire. At length, he speaks, his gaze shifting to Margo. "You have your own reasons for bringing Compassion here, outworlder, but I thank you for it regardless. Now, speak to me of what you want."

No point in trying to beat about the bush. In his own way, Amund seems to appreciate directness. Margo settles on a log — cleaned of branches so that it can take its place in the fire when the others burn out — and explains her predicament. Since she is unsure of how much Amund knows, she starts from the beginning — with her discovery of Evie's scar, then the trial, and finally the debacle in the chantry. The Avvar listens quietly, still and silent as a statue, his dark eyes attentive but unreadable. When she is done, he says nothing, the crackling flames and the wind in the pines the only sounds.

"Will you help?" Margo finally asks, her heart thudding heavily against her ribs. Fear coats her tongue with a metallic tang.

Amund sighs, an edge of irritation creeping into his placid features. "The little prophet is god-touched, whether for good or ill. There is no getting around it. It has happened before and will happen again; so it has been said, and so it will be sung. You ask of me to help you spin your truth into the weave of their lie, little spider." He looks at her with steel in his eyes, but his gaze softens when it falls on Cole. "Sometimes the greatest mercy is a dagger to slice through the delusions. Do not ask me to convince them that the bear they hear stalking in the forest is a fennec."

Cole looks to the sky. "He doesn't care about their webs. Only the Great Tear and the Lady's Children falling, fragmented, frightful. Lies offer comfort as the world sunders. What harm is there to let them have theirs? It will all burn in the end."

Amund pokes the logs with the tip of his boot and grumbles something unflattering in his language, every bit the crotchety old man — complete with a final irritated huff.

"You would ask a boon of me, outworlder. Very well. But a spinna is a rare birth indeed, however or wherever it comes about. You are not entirely blinded by pride — for a lowlander, anyway — so I will speak to you of what is the case. Who knows, it might even get through the wool in your ears." There is a vehemence to his voice, just this side of anger. The flames dance in his dark eyes, and for a second Amund looks ancient — a carving of obsidian and granite, waiting in vigil in a forgotten forest. "Do not think that this power is given freely, or that you deserve it. It is not there to serve you . It is not yours to take, or have, or adorn yourself with. It was given in exchange, earned and tended to by those who came long before you. Do not be the leaf that believes itself the cause behind the sun shining on it." He sighs, the anger draining, curdling into tired resignation. "This world needs more self-appointed saviors like a goat needs frilly knickers, little spider. I will vouch for you and for the god-touched. And, in return, you will stop your pointless mucking about with wishmongers and wolves and old forest things and gods-know-what-else you do when left to fend for yourself. And you will do as you must, and learn the weavecraft."

Margo hopes her grin is suitably sheepish — or at least not overly eager. After all, she is pretty sure Amund just chewed her out. "Deal," she adds quickly, before he has a chance to reconsider.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Amund, who remains thoroughly unimpressed._

Next up: the truth comes out


	58. Chapter 58: Occam's Broom

_In which Margo offers an alternative theory. Warning: sort of cliffhangs, but not too badly._

* * *

Haven looks like it's rehearsing for the apocalypse. The main thoroughfare is dark, mostly deserted, and covered with a layer of substance formerly categorizable as slush, now frozen. In the hollow silence of the frigid mountain night, the crunch of ice underfoot is deafening. The black silhouettes of the trebuchets jut out against the sky like the carcasses of an abandoned oil rig, putting Margo in mind of some depressing post-industrial landscape. In the village proper most storm shutters are tightly closed, and the narrow shafts of light that squeeze through the gaps provide scant illumination. No sound of song or conversation drifts from the tavern down the street — the alehouse is lit from the inside but muted. Ahead of them the chantry looms, a pale outline against the vast scatter of alien constellations.

As they approach the apothecary, Margo considers whether there is anything in there she might use to corroborate her identity. She would be an idiot — a naive and unforgivably self-important idiot — if she were to assume that anything she might say and most of the things she might do would cause the Inquisition's finest to simply adjust their well-worn paradigms. But she isn't sure that any props she might conjure would impress the Abomination Evaluation Committee. Thedas isn't her own world's past, not some medieval time travel fantasy. It rotates around magic — is defined by it — and hence its developmental trajectory must be taken as distinct from the one she is familiar with. To assume that some simplistic parlor trick masquerading as a science experiment might impress a people who live and breathe what her fellow Earthlings would consider miracles would be the height of ethnocentrism. On the other hand, there has to be something she can do.

They pass several doorways with bushels of dried flowers hung more or less discretely above their frames.

"Does embrium have any particular significance in this part of the Frostbacks?" Margo asks no one in particular. Even desiccated and frostbitten, the flowers are easy to identify.

Cole responds, and the quality of his voice reminds Margo of a short-tempered and overworked mother of eight. "Everyone knows the red flower wards off death. Hang it over the threshold if ye don't want the restless dead to come knocking. "

Margo nods. She suspected it was something like this, and the confirmation only adds to her unease. She isn't sure whether it would be better that people be dismissive of Evie or terrified to the point of undertaking ritual precautions.

The courtyard in front of the apothecary is bathed in bluish moonlight, but all the windows are dark. Margo isn't surprised that Adan is, once again, nowhere in sight — when he's not conducting experiments on his liver's capacity to process ethanol, the senior alchemist tends to approach his job as a nine-to-five. She wonders briefly whether Solas is asleep or occupied elsewhere.

Cole dives into the side alley so abruptly that Margo's momentum carries her forward several steps before she registers the absence.

"Hurry." His voice rings out, eerie and bright in the snowy silence. "If they wait too long, they will get impatient. They won't listen if they're impatient."

Margo follows, Amund beside her. A quick glance at the Avvar reveals that the part of his face not concealed by the mask is telegraphing spectacular displeasure. It dawns on Margo then that his insistence on training her might not be simply a species of misplaced Kantian categorical imperative. This venture into town is not his idea of a pleasant walk — that he would suffer it regardless should tell her something about the nature of the training he anticipates. It doesn't bode well for her.

Ahead of them, Cole speaks again, his timbre changing towards something vaguely reminiscent of a Scottish brogue, though nothing quite as thick as the accent of the balding fellow Margo's former "team" rescued from Redcliffe. She wonders whatever happened to him and his elven "niece." "Maker's balls, it's cold. Void if I know why they need Master Adan's helper in the first place - don't even know what she looks like. Blonde elven lass, they said. Could be any one of the blighted knife-ears. Lots of good that does out here anyway, can barely see my own boots. Blighted mountains, why'd it have to be me... "

It's another ten steps until, suddenly, Cole's soliloquy finds its echoed reflection.

"... should have tried to make a go of it in Denerim one more— Ho! Who goes there?"

"Friends," Cole replies. His tone is far too slow and pensive to pass for amiable, and the figure on the other side of the narrow street shifts uneasily with a sound of creaking leather. Margo doesn't recognize the man. Human, judging by the frame, and not one of Leliana's, based on the armor — the little of it she can see, anyway. "I think you are looking for her." Cole inclines his head towards Margo. "We are ready to come."

The fellow lifts his shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. "Good 'nough for me."

Margo has never been inside the so-called "war room," though she has heard Varric refer to it on multiple occasions. In the center of the dim, vaulted chamber is a truly spectacular expanse of wood that, for some inexplicable reason, reminds her of a B-movie's take on a sacrificial altar. As if all it wants to be is a giant slab of granite, but the director said they don't have the budget for it. The table is littered with maps, official-looking documents, and a collection of place-markers and pawns that make Margo wonder whether the advisors might have a secret passion for the local version of Settlers of Catan . The mess is reassuring. As long as it is covered in stuff, the likelihood of the table being used for nefarious ritualistic purposes is low: no one likes to get blood on the paperwork. Chairs of miscellaneous persuasions — from an intricately carved throne with plush armrests to two ancient, rickety three-legged wooden stools — are arranged in an irregular oval.

Margo isn't sure what she had expected, but whatever it was, it wasn't the majority of the inner circle. Varric is missing, as are Sera and Blackwall. The triumvirate of Torquemada, Cullen, and Josephine has been squared off by Cassandra — Margo supposes that this new arrangement technically makes it a Quadrumvirate. She notes that the Four Footmen of the Apocalypse have occupied the best chairs. (Calling them Horsemen is, technically speaking, inaccurate on account of the absence of horses.) The second tier of seating options is taken by Vivienne, Dorian, and Solas, who all sport almost identical expressions of general disgust, although Dorian has the advantage of looking mildly entertained. The last member of the Diagnosing Spirit Possession Club is the Iron Bull. Faced with the choice of a rickety stool or leaning against the wall, the Qunari has prudently opted for the latter. The position has the added benefit of allowing him to loom menacingly from the shadows.

With the entirety of her former team in the room, Margo's mind flashes to Redcliffe. And there she was, exceptionally successful at not thinking about the whole sordid mess. Her jaw tightens. She didn't think she had stayed angry with them.

Well.

With an unpleasantly hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, Margo realizes that, aside from Amund, she does not unequivocally trust anyone in this room not to sell her out if needed. Not even Solas, no matter what other emotions she might be harboring. One is defined by one's actions, not one's good intentions. There is no reason to think that any of them would risk their own neck for her, nor fail to throw her under the carriage in the name of expediency. Disposable is as disposable does.

Oh, unspecified and unmerciful deity, this is, as per usual, stupid. She needs to stop stumbling around blindly like a particularly overeager drunken bear and take thirty seconds to think things through before embarking on the next idiotic and likely lethal course of action.

"Ah, finally, the agent has been located. Very— Oh?" Judging by the flash of surprise on Torquemada's features — concealed as quickly as it appears, of course — the spymaster did not expect the cavalry. Heads pivot towards the entrance. Margo follows Cole inside, and, on her heels, Amund marches in, creepily silent in his fur-soled boots. He occupies a spot by the door, props his back against the wall, and lets the giant wolf-headed hammer rest between his feet with the bassy resonance of a funeral gong. Cullen and Cassandra meet this with matching frowns. Vivienne's eyebrow twitches. Dorian smiles into his fist, and Solas defaults to his habitual pleasantly polite mask. Bull offers the Avvar a neutral nod. Whatever else might be the case, Margo would bet a sovereign (if she had one to bet) that no one expected Amund. The only one to take this with any degree of social grace is Josephine: she offers all of them one of those amiable smiles that is addressed to no one in particular but designed such that each member of the audience interprets it as directed solely at them.

"Well." Torquemada is the first to recover. "I see you have availed yourself of an escort. What is the purpose of their presence?"

"To offer additional information, should it be needed." That seems neutral enough. No need to antagonize the spymaster too early.

Torquemada scowls, but she gestures towards one of the rickety stools. "Take a seat, agent."

"Thank you, I'll stand," Margo offers with a calm she doesn't feel. Her heart is hammering against her ribcage — she'll probably regret the refusal later, but she isn't about to collaborate in Torquemada's little ballet. It's taken her some time, but she is learning the redhead's little tells — the slightly more unctuous tone, the partly hooded eyes. The delicate little smile. This is building up towards another round of " j'accuse ."

"Do you know why you are here?"

Cole gives Margo's hand a squeeze, fingers cold as ice, but his touch reassuring. "You should tell them. It's only going to get harder if they ask first."

Torquemada presses her lips together and peers at the young man, but the exercise fails to offer any added insights. Tempting as it is to gloat about it — no one likes a counteroffensive — Margo forces herself to focus on the task at hand.

"I suppose for the same reason the rest of you are here. Because of Evie." She draws a breath and looks pointedly between the members of the Quadrumvirate. She needs to try to control the frame, as much as such a thing is possible under the circumstances, and thus, she needs to retake the initiative. "You want to understand what Evie is. As of now, I suspect you are leaning towards the conclusion that her magic is caused by a state of possession. I am here to offer an alternative theory."

The quality of the air in the room changes, the collective attention on her almost as tangible as a physical touch. Margo exhales quietly. No backing out now.

Torquemada's squint is unpleasantly speculative. "What an uncannily accurate guess, agent . This is not quite why you were summoned, but please, as long as you're here... I do wonder what you might be able to tell us about the nature of the Herald's magic that three perfectly accomplished mages couldn't. Unless you have another hidden talent we have not yet uncovered?"

Margo swallows. She was expecting hostility, but not this early. She is going to have to switch strategies if she hopes to stay a step ahead. On a better day, she might have found it ironic that in her own world's religious traditions radical shifts in affect are often used to signal possession or trance — especially since she is about to consciously exploit the technique to generate the same eerie effect.

This is not a better day.

"As long as you are set on this course of trying to classify Evie through your habitual categories, spymaster, I am afraid you will find the exercise frustrating, unproductive, and misleading." She drops the mask, no longer modulating her pronunciation, vocabulary, and demeanor, and Maile's ill-fitting persona sloughs off like an old snake skin. The prosody changes. Her words come out crisper, sharper, her accent heavier. "I do not claim expertise on magic, only the advantage of an outsider's gaze." It is the first time in her history of interacting with Leliana that Margo doesn't feel either overwhelmed with terror or crushed under despondent exhaustion. In fact, the only thing she feels is annoyance. She'll take it. "As to why I have made an accurate guess, it is because I bothered to listen to what Cole had to say."

"And what is Cole, precisely?" Vivienne asks with a level look at the boy.

Solas turns his head towards the Orlesian enchanter. When he speaks, his tone is studiously polite. "It seems that Cole is a spirit."

"A demon," the Iron Lady corrects after a pause.

Next to Margo, Cole fidgets, and it is her turn to squeeze his hand in reassurance.

"If you prefer, although the truth is somewhat more complex. In fact, his nature is not so easily defined." Solas's expression remains placid. The only thing that suggests any inner turmoil is how ramrod-straight his spine is.

Margo catches Dorian's gaze. The other mage is tapping his chin pensively, one eyebrow raised. Aside from Solas, he is the only one in the room who appears more intrigued than scandalized by this latest revelation about Cole.

"An abomination, then," Vivienne parries, still set on her task of taxonomic disambiguation.

"Cole is... unique. He has possessed nothing and no one, and yet he appears human in all respects. He looks like a young man. For all intents and purposes, he is a young man."

"We are digressing. We will return to Cole — and what to do about him — at a later date." Torquemada drums her gauntleted fingers on the desk. "You mentioned something, agent, that I would like to return to. You say you have proof that the Herald is not possessed. But I cannot establish the veracity of your words before I establish who speaks them."

At this, Josephine decides that it is time to intervene. Her voice is steely under the veneer of polite amiability. "Leliana, there is no need for a lapse in manners or veiled innuendo. Margo — that is still your preferred moniker, is it not? — has been most diligent in lending her skills to our cause." The ambassador pretends to straighten an already perfectly neat pile of notes in front of her. "And we did summon her to speak. It seems rather disingenuous to question the information she would offer just on account of her anticipating our request."

"Of course. Except for that matter of multiple witnesses reporting that she had some sort of seizure just as the Herald was animating the dead in the chantry. Isn't that right, Solas? You did order Cole to get out of range, yes? Cassandra, can you corroborate?"

"I..." Cassandra gives Margo a troubled, mildly apologetic look. "I saw it also. Although I do not claim to understand the reasons behind it."

"I might venture a guess," Torquemada offers brightly.

"Save the effort." Margo is probably squeezing the circulation out of Cole's fingers, but he withstands it stoically. "You are correct, spymaster. By your definition, I am the abomination. Not Evie."

This has the merit of earning her at least one gasp and several sharply drawn breaths. Torquemada's eyes widen, and for a blissful second or two the spymaster is at a loss for words. Margo represses another bout of grimly satisfying Schadenfreude and the overwhelming temptation to shout "gotcha!" and stick out her tongue.

She casts a quick glance in Solas's direction. It is a wonder the elf hasn't managed to stare a hole through her yet. Next to him, Dorian's expression appears to be the nonverbal equivalent of, "Are you certain you know what you're doing?" A fair question, if ever there was one.

"That's actually the good news, as far as everyone here is concerned," Margo continues, pressing whatever meager advantage surprise might lend, and hoping that sticking with the acerbic and mildly impudent approach will keep Torquemada off her footing. "Because, as you will see, it demonstrates that Evie's power precedes Therinfal. Am I correct in guessing that this meeting has been convened to determine whether Evie is possessed by Envy?" Not that it is, strictly speaking, a guess, since Cole had seeded the idea. But the Quadrumvirate needs not know that.

"Wait a moment. You... would admit to being possessed?" Cullen leans forward in his chair. The skin under his tawny eyes is still shadowed with lack of sleep, but he looks much healthier than usual. There is even some color in his cheeks. To Margo's surprise he does not appear hostile, but, rather, profoundly nonplused. He rubs the back of his neck in an absentminded gesture, caught somewhere between fatigue, incredulity, and puzzlement. "I happen to have some experience with abominations. Unfortunately. They don't exactly tend to announce themselves if they can help it." His tone is dry. "What are you saying?"

Margo smiles wryly. "Actually, I am the one doing the possessing, if you want to be technical. This is why I personally find the term simplistic and a bit loaded, but it seems like these are the preferred local concepts, so who am I to argue? I'd be happy to discuss the nuances, if you're interested."

"So we are now in the business of collecting demons." Vivienne observes Margo with newfound depths of disgust.

A tiny movement catches Margo's peripheral vision. Bull shifts, the motion exceedingly casual — lazy, even. Steel glints in his hand. In the next instant, Amund takes a half-step forward, turns his head in Bull's direction, and raps the business end of his hammer against the stones, making the metal vibrate with a low hum. Bull shrugs with one shoulder and leans back against the wall. The blade disappears between the folds of his trousers.

"I've got no issue with you, Amund."

"And I've no quarrel with you, Child of the Qun, as long as you don't jump to stupid conclusions."

"There will be no violence in this room, are we clear?" Cassandra turns to Margo, her mouth set in a grim line. "I think you had best explain yourself, agent."

In the next few moments, all the members of the Abomination Committee attempt to speak simultaneously, until the cacophony is interrupted by Josephine who, for lack of a judge's gavel, pounds on the table with a hefty glass paperweight.

"I am sure we are all perfectly capable of having a civilized conversation," she states when she finally achieves a suitable level of cowed silence. The look the ambassador gives Bull could shame stone. "The Iron Bull, would you please proceed over to this side of the table, away from our guests? You are welcome to make use of one of those crates. There are also more chairs to be found in my office." That last part is directed at Cullen and Cassandra.

Once additional furniture is acquired, they are all urged — very politely, and with absolutely no option for dissent — to take a seat. The ambassador rings a small bell, and an elven servant appears shortly after with a large tray of tea and an assortment of matching cups. And just like that, the power dynamic shifts in favor of Lady Montilyet.

Tea distributed among more or less grateful participants, Josephine takes a dainty little sip and gestures at Margo. "Agent, I believe I would not be alone were I to express my surprise at your... admission. Surely, you do not mean your statement literally? In any event, if it will help us settle our doubts about the Herald, we would all be very grateful were you to explain." Josephine punctuates this with a very meaningful look at the spymaster.

Margo nods, forces herself to take a sip of tea — she can't taste it behind the burn — and sets her cup on the saucer in front of her. The porcelain is adorned with a pleasantly inoffensive floral pattern.

"What is your current working theory regarding the nature of Evie's magic? I promise the question is relevant, so bear with me."

This is met with uncomfortable silence. Margo catches some kind of a wordless exchange between Dorian and Solas, but the meaningful glances are nothing if not opaque.

Finally, Cassandra pinches the bridge of her nose with calloused fingers and sighs in exhausted frustration. "We... have not reached an agreement as of yet. One possibility is that what we believed to be the Herald destroying the demon at Therinfal was, in fact, the moment when it possessed her. It would explain Evelyn's sudden facility with magic."

"There are also telling changes in overall comportment," Torquemada offers, entirely too pleasantly, and smiles at Margo over her own teacup.

"And yet, I saw no traces of a spirit's or a demon's presence. I must confirm this in the Fade, but a superficial evaluation would suggest—"

"No traces that you have noticed, my dear. One does not reveal oneself to be a mage in adulthood, Solas. In women, the propensity for magic usually presents itself by menarche, sometimes a few years later. Evelyn is two and twenty years of age — far outside the usual range for exhibiting the first signs of magic, let alone the remarkable control she appears to have over it seemingly without any training. And the nature of her magic is most peculiar—"

"Vivienne, surely it has come to your attention that our dear Evelyn's magic is heavily influenced by the mark?" Dorian leans back in his chair, his own cup balanced on one knee. "Add to this the rumors that someone attempted to turn the poor girl Tranquil, and are you truly surprised that her abilities would be 'most peculiar' under the circumstances?"

"Lest we run through the same set of arguments for the third time this evening, why don't we ask our... guest what evidence she can offer." Josephine gestures at Margo with her cup. "Please. I am sure your claims must pertain directly to Evelyn. Otherwise I doubt you would be presenting them in such shocking terms."

If Josephine wanted to stage a unilateral coup and take the reins of the Inquisition single-handed, Margo decides she would fully support her. "Thank you, ambassador." She draws a breath. "Yes. My point is simple. Evie's magic is unrelated to anything she encountered in Therinfal because it precedes it by... let me calculate... at least forty-seven days."

This earns her an assortment of quizzical looks — except from Solas and Dorian, who are now both in the business of staring holes through her.

"That is a rather precise date," Cullen ventures. If Margo didn't know any better, she would think that there is a twinkle of humor under the layer of unease. "Well. I suppose I don't mind being the one to ask the obvious question. What happened forty-seven days before Therinfal?"

Here it is. Margo hopes her voice doesn't tremble. When she finally speaks, she is mildly surprised to find her words perfectly measured. "The woman some of you have known as Maile died when Evie closed the rift beneath the Breach. I am not her." She pauses. "My full name is Margarita Duvalle. I was born thirty-one Earth years ago to a Hungarian mother and a French father, in a small village on the eastern bank of the Danube river, in a country the name of which you will not find on any map. I am a historian by training and profession. Based on your classifications, you would have identified my original body as 'human.' Forty-seven days prior to the events at Therinfal I was killed in my world, and whatever remained of me was pulled into yours, and into this body."

"The only explanation I can offer for this swap is Evie's magic."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Occam's Broom, the process through which inconvenient facts are swept under the rug in the interest of trying to maintain a simple explanation for a messy reality._

 _Next up: Reactions, practical demonstrations, and a confrontation or two._

 _As always, thank you for your follows, thoughts, and comments!_


	59. Chapter 59: Mesmerisms

_In which Margo puts a new spin on things._

 ** _Author's note: Thank you all of you for reading, following, leaving thoughts (or not, that's ok too) etc. A quick note - I've been able to keep a very steady posting schedule, but I'm going to have to slow down a bit. The next few weeks are very very busy at work, and I have several projects that need to go out of the gate asap. I'll try to stick to 1/week if I can, but I can't make any promises. This is just to let you know that if the posting rate slows down, it's not because I stopped writing or the story is winding down - it's because work/life imbalance is unreasonable. In the meantime, enjoy the next installment!_**

* * *

The silence that follows Margo's announcement is so thick you could slather it on toast. So when the silver spoon clatters to the floor with a bright tinkle, ten heads snap as one in the direction of the noise.

"Pardon," Cullen mutters, coloring to the roots of his hair. "These spoons are very small, aren't they. Seems hardly practical, under the circumstances."

This is followed by more stunned silence.

"It was a present from Comtesse Lutetia," Josephine replies in somewhat of a daze. "She commissioned the butterfly design herself. We couldn't very well refuse without offending."

"Ahem." Cassandra clears her throat — entirely unnecessarily by the sound of it — and, after a quick glance at Torquemada, peers at Margo with a quizzical frown. As far as the Seeker's expressions are concerned, the emotional distance between "puzzled" and "livid" is mostly symbolic. "I am sorry, agent. I... must have misheard. Where did you say you were from?"

"You really shouldn't talk to that thing, my dear," Vivienne chastises between sips of tea. She casually swipes off the imprint of silvery lipstick from the rim of her cup before continuing. "It is a demon."

"But that's not true!" Cole, bless him, looks genuinely indignant at this announcement.

"Spoken by another demon," Vivienne comments sweetly.

In the meantime, Torquemada's expression takes a turn for the predatory. She sets her cup on the table and interlaces her fingers in front of her. "Therinfal, the encounter with Envy, and Cole's intervention were the triggering events for the Herald's magical abilities. If there was anything prior to that, no one witnessed it. And now, agent, you are spinning some... bizarre story about your purported identity. Similar to when you made outlandish claims about a conveniently invisible Tranquility scar that only you could see. All of this leads me to conclude that you are either an especially inspired agent provocateur , and that your master, whoever he or she is, has an odd sense of humor, or that you have gone mad." The spymaster leans forward, eyes aglow with some sudden epiphany. "Of course! Both of these claims have in common one thing, agent. They put you in the center of events. By placing you closer to the Herald, they inflate your own relevance. I should have considered this earlier. The change in personality, the abrupt shift in skills, the apparent loss of memory. The accent. This line of work sometimes breeds insanity. I have seen such delusions of self-importance and persecution before."

"Leliana, dear, with all due respect, I must disagree. Madness does not explain the creature's responsiveness to the Herald's spell."

"A simulation, then. A careful game to convince us at a later date."

"Convince us that she is a demon ?" Cassandra asks, one eyebrow raised in question. "That would be a rather peculiar goal."

"I'm not certain that either of your assessments is correct." Of all the people Margo expected to come to her aid, Cullen would not have made it anywhere near the hypothetical list. "Demons are..." He grasps for words but comes up short. Instead, the former templar passes a hand over his face and exhales forcefully before finishing what he began. "Based on my experience, anyway, demons aren't... storytellers. They will take your own desires and thoughts and turn them against you like some sick mirror, but this..." — his waving in Margo's general direction comes off as mildly accusatory — "Maker's breath, what she says is just too bizarre for any demon I can imagine. Nor does she act like a demon."

"Demons are clever, darling. It would not do to underestimate them," Vivienne presses. "If there is even a slight chance that it is a demon, then I suggest we kill it. I do not believe it insane. The fact that it has managed to hide among us for well over a month should be proof enough that it is dangerous."

Another attempt by those assembled to speak all at once is interrupted by three loud metal thuds. Amund, silent and still until then, unfolds to his full height of almost seven feet, and leans on the haft of his weapon — which has just managed to one-up Josephine's paperweight in the gavel impersonation contest.

Puzzled faces turn towards the Avvar.

"If you fancy yourselves so wealthy in allies, lowlanders, that you would spit in the face of the gods who have brought Compassion to your door, and who granted you a spinna , then you are even more foolish than I thought." Amund punctuates this with another thunk of his hammer. His eyes blaze, black and angry under the mask, but his face remains impassive otherwise. Oddly, his ire is directed at Vivienne, and Margo wonders whether this is the result of his dislike for this mage specifically, for Circle mages more generally, or for Orlesians at large. "You would rob your prophet of her power because you cannot bridle it, you would kill the outworlder before learning of her purpose. Here you sit, drinking your tea, and have the temerity to discuss what 'to do' with Compassion. As if that choice were yours to make?" His voice grows metallic. "You are blind to the signs, deaf to the gods, and glutted with your own ambitions. My people walked these mountain paths before your cities were an orphaned seedling in the Land of Dreams. When your empires are nothing but swirling dust and bleached bones, we will remain." He pauses. "I would see the Tear mended, but after that I happily leave you to your nonsense. I will take the outworlder and Compassion with me, since you won't have them." At that, he turns to Margo and Cole. "There is a place for you in the Mountain Father's shadow."

This time no falling silverware breaks the stunned silence.

"Well. I fear I only understood about a third of what our fur-clad guest had to say, but if he wants to leave with the two abominations now , I suppose we could consider allowing them to do so." Vivienne's tone is perfectly even, but her face is held too still, as if each individual piece has to be arranged consciously.

"I hope that will not be necessary." Solas's voice rings out with banked intensity — a warning masquerading as a wish. He waits before continuing, and Margo has the sneaking suspicion that he is timing his words strategically, to maximize their rhetorical effect. "It is kind of you to offer them shelter when others would not, Amund." Under the cold politeness, a flash of fire.

Amund gives the elf a sour look. "Make no mistake, dreamstrider. I have little use for your empty accolades."

"No. You have your people's interests at heart, and you see a path to further them."

Beneath the mask, Amund's mouth quirks in a derisive twist. "Sizing up everyone against your own measuring stick will leave you discontented in the long run, lowlander."

Dorian pretends to smooth out his mustache, but the effort to hide the smile is spoiled by the failure to repress the snort. Josephine looks mildly scandalized. Based on the fact that Solas's ears turn an alarming shade of fuschia, Margo decides that she isn't alone in hearing the double-meaning.

"Everything I do, I do because such is the the will of the Lady of the Skies," Amund adds with great dignity.

Solas looks like he is about to retort, but Cole interrupts. "Please." He fidgets restlessly. "Do not argue. Not now. It will end very badly."

"And it started so well," Dorian quips quietly.

Solas glances at the other mage, but quickly returns his attention to Cole. "Forgive us, my friend. You are correct, of course." He seems to debate with himself — again some untenable contradiction, war waged and won — or lost. When he speaks, his voice is calm. "I can corroborate the agent's claims. While I do not fully understand the mechanism behind her dislocation, I can assure you that she is no demon, and that, indeed, she did not originate in our world." Margo finally allows herself to meet his eyes. Solas holds her gaze for much too long. For a moment, it is as if a mysterious door is left partially ajar, and she gets a glimpse of what is seemingly behind it — a weary, wistful, irreparable sadness. And then his face shutters and he turns towards Torquemada. "I suspect you have questions."

"I..." The spymaster stumbles. It's not quite a sputter, but Margo decides it's as close as she's ever likely to get. She'll take it. "I most certainly do. But let us establish the facts first. What part of her claim is true? Are you suggesting that she comes from beyond Thedas?"

"Yes."

"Do you realize how unbelievable this sounds?" Cassandra's emotional gauge is slowly creeping towards the angry side of the spectrum.

"More unbelievable than a catastrophic tear in the Veil?"

"I would say less unbelievable if Lord Cerastes manages to prove his latest hypothesis about the celestial origins of certain metals." Dorian casts a look around, until his eyebrows draw together in annoyance. Margo recognizes the impulse as that of someone habitually surrounded by books, and unaccustomed to not having a library at his fingertips. "I suppose I should not expect anyone here to be familiar with his writings. Your Chantry did ban the Alchemical Primer, didn't it?" He turns to Margo. "Which reminds me, I could arrange for you to have a copy. Interested?"

Margo can't help it. She grins with unabashed intellectual greed. "Yes? Very?"

"Well, you are certainly on friendly terms with the creature, aren't you, Dorian."

Dorian glances at Madame de Fer with an air of barely concealed superiority, and Margo decides that he is relishing the opportunity to make Orlais look like a bunch of superstitious bumpkins. "Oh, you know that I adore the south, my dear." His tone is honeyed. "It is so terribly quaint I find myself wanting to pinch its cheeks and offer it a sweetroll. Sadly, southern culture has not impressed me with its interest in research, or with its desire to understand the nature of our world. One must cherish one's intellectual interlocutors where one finds them, don't you think?" Vivienne's nostrils flare. "Oh, I almost forgot. I would like to second Solas's assessment. Imagine that, we are agreed on something!" Dorian's eyes sparkle with a mischievous twinkle. "Our dear Margo really is from elsewhere. Simply fascinating , isn't it?"

"She is what she says and more. She dreams of other skies beneath this one." Cole threads his fingers through Margo's under the table, and squeezes gently. "They feel bad about it, you know. Yes, even he. Betrayal, like poison in the gut, caustic, corrosive. Why does it always taste like ashes?"

Torquemada, pale with anger, or shock, or both, glares intermittently between Margo, Dorian, Solas, and Cole. "We have digressed from the matter at hand," she finally manages. "Solas. How long have you known this?"

The elf hesitates, but then nods slowly. "A week or so after we returned from sealing the first rift, she asked me for assistance in trying to recover her memories. I discovered who she truly was during that process. It was not... anticipated."

"You learned of this over a month ago ? And said nothing?" This time, Cassandra takes a turn at the outraged glare.

"And what should I have said, Seeker, that would not have resulted in your killing her outright or in ripping her apart to find answers you would not have believed regardless?" He does not modulate the underlying anger.

"Oh, do not snap at us, Solas dear — it is most unbecoming. If she is what she claims to be, why not come forward immediately? Why seek back-alley 'help' from a stranger she had known for... how long? A few days?"

Margo winces. The Iron Lady has managed to make her question sound both damning and, somehow, obscene.

"Perhaps because of the impending probability of interrogation at the Inquisition's hands? How would you fare, I wonder, were you stranded in a foreign world where everything is unfamiliar and hostile; where you are forced into a body not of your own choosing; where every word is scrutinized and every action offers cause for condemnation?"

"Such flare for melodrama, Solas! But I suppose that is unsurprising, coming from an apostate."

"All mages are technically apostates now, Madame Vivienne. Yourself included."

"Wait a damn moment." The Iron Bull shifts on his crate, considers the cup of tea — still full — set in front of him, and drains it in one gulp like a shot of liquor. In his hand, the dainty porcelain is dwarfed to the size of a thimble. "Let me get this straight. Both you and Dorian knew that Blondie was — whatever the fuck she is — when we went to Redcliffe?" His expression grows thunderous. "All right. Say what she says is true — not saying it is, just talking hypotheticals here. You let me just hand her over to Alexius? Did you miss the part where the bastard is crazier than a dathrasi on saar-qamek? The fuck were you thinking?"

"That, should you learn of her nature, you would be more inclined to orchestrate an assassination attempt. You are Ben-Hassrath, are you not? Yours is a formidable organization with far-reaching resources, I hear."

The sarcasm isn't lost on Bull, because he scowls at Solas, but he seems more troubled than angry by this point. "For all we know, her entire world is made of nothing but demons. Ugh."

"If so, they are nothing like any demons I have ever encountered," Solas retorts dryly. "But if you are interested in learning more about her world, Iron Bull, I would suggest you ask Margo yourself. She seems in a better position to offer insights on it than I am."

Margo starts. Ten pairs of eyes focus back on her. She almost preferred it when they were all discussing her in the third person — she could relax, watch the show, and forget that her life was being decided in front of her.

"My world has no demons, Bull. Which doesn't mean it doesn't have its share of unpleasant assholes." That surprises a dry chuckle out of him — and another snort from Dorian, who looks like he is enjoying himself thoroughly — but the Qunari doesn't exactly melt with newfound regard, so Margo continues, this time addressing her words to the rest of the assembly. "My planet — the celestial body from which I come — is sometimes called 'Earth,' or 'Terra,' or some other terms, depending on your linguistic idiom of choice. I have no idea where it is vis-a-vis yours. We don't have demons, or spirits, or magic, or the Fade. We don't have the Veil. Although our cultures do have similar concepts — a fact I find quite interesting. Anyway."

"Agent, you said earlier that you are... were? Human?" Cassandra looks dubious. "How similar is your world, then?"

"Definitely not human anymore." Bull looks like he's measuring several competing possibilities, none of them life-affirming. "Smells much better, though."

On the other side of the table, Solas and Dorian choke simultaneously — Dorian on his tea, and Solas for no discernible reason whatsoever.

"Iron Bull!" Josephine flushes with embarrassment and annoyance. Margo decides she's heard worse, from Bull or otherwise.

Bull cuts them a sardonic look and shrugs. "All I'm sayin' is that the outside's an elf — not claiming what's in the filling. Maybe we should ask Solas about that."

Margo avoids looking at Solas — or Bull — and draws a breath, directing her utterance at Cassandra. "Our phenotypic expression — which is to say, our physical appearance — is less diverse than in Thedas. We used to have multiple species of what we call 'humans,' but they all went extinct except for one. We do not have dwarves, or elves, or — Qunari?" Bull nods, but does not elaborate or contest. "From what I have read of your world, we are somewhat similar to your dwarves in cultural orientation, though I generalize. Without magic, we have poured our creative energies into technology, though access to it is unevenly distributed. We mine a lot of the resources we need to build it. We rely on it as a kind of prosthesis, and use it for myriad things. To learn about the nature of the world. To travel. To make art or things that entertain us. To heal our sick." She shrugs. "And to kill each other, naturally."

Margo pauses and represses the impulse to ask whether there are any questions so far — and then has to squash an impending fit of hysterical giggles.

"Clearly this is a blatant untruth. Without a connection to the Fade, one would be incapable of emotions, unable to feel desires. How would such a people build an advanced culture? They would be content to run around in furs." Vivienne smiles charmingly. "I told you, the thing lies — and not very artfully, in my opinion."

"Madame de Fer, that is quite sufficient!" Josephine pales, then blushes, and then, after a deep breath, glares at Vivienne until the latter offers a little shrug that, Margo supposes, might, with some imagination, signal an apology. "Our guest just informed us that she comes from a place that is similar to dwarven society. Are you suggesting that dwarves are also incapable of emotion or invention? They have no connection to the Fade, after all."

"We are not discussing dwarves, Josephine."

"I don't suppose you can prove what you are?" Cullen casts a glance at Cassandra, and some odd silent exchange passes between them, before the Seeker offers a tiny nod. "The night I came to the apothecary. I was feeling... unwell. My memories are vague, but the technique you used to help me — is it from your world?"

Ah. So he remembers some of the CPR— and whatever he remembers surprised him. No wonder Cullen is willing to at least entertain the idea.

"Yes. Without magic, our approach to healing evolved differently from yours."

"I thought you had said you were a... scholar?" Torquemada glares. "Not a healer."

"I am not a healer," Margo confirms. "But I know what we call first aid because my brother is... was... liable to become unwell, too." She stares at Cullen, willing him to understand what she is implying — and hoping that it will get him more firmly into her camp. Cynical, but what can you do. Cullen's eyes widen, and then he offers a tiny little nod.

"Commander, are you... all right?"

"Yes, ambassador, thank you for asking." He clears his throat and stares at his boots.

Margo battles another round of impending hysterics. The Inquisition. Where everyone is hiding something.

"Anyway. I... I am inclined to think that what you describe is possible, agent. But I am a military man." Cullen chuckles ruefully. "My mind works best with material proof, not logic games."

Margo sighs. Cullen wouldn't be in his position if he weren't an excellent tactician. The whole soldier boy act is just that — an act. Right. Cullen is the good cop.

In any case, she anticipated this, sort of. Perhaps it is a natural desire — even people with access to magic long for the promise of the miraculous. But if she can pull this off, then she will have Cullen in her corner, and from there, she is fairly sure she can get Cassandra and Josephine. That would be six allies, not counting Cole. A large enough group for the time being.

"I can't promise that I'll manage to prove what I am, or that what I claim is true, but I can maybe offer you something... to think about, I suppose."

Josephine nods firmly and glares at the rest of the assembly. "If so, then the Inquisition would certainly wish to hear it."

"If you are done chasing your own tails, lowlanders, I have work to do before the night is out." Amund rises to his feet. "I have fulfilled my part of the bargain, luzzil spinna . They are too tangled in the web to hurt you now. I will find you when it is time to begin." He swings his weapon over his shoulder. Cullen and Cassandra duck under and out of the way of the massive wolf-headed maul. "Compassion. You are welcome to stay with me for as long as you are willing. I cannot offer much, except for the quiet."

"Thank you, Amund. I want to stay here, but after, yes."

With a last nod to Cole, Amund exits.

Margo looks around. "I don't suppose one of you has a sewing needle made of metal?"

It takes an eternity to assemble all the components, but, with the promise of a material demonstration, Margo is able to marshal collaborators — if not allies — much more quickly. Dorian, bless him, has several pins that hold the various parts of his complicated outfit together — as well as a sewing needle he offers with mock reluctance. His eyes are glimmering with curiosity.

Josephine provides the wine bottle, and Margo borrows Bull's dagger — a risk, but a calculated one — to slice off a narrow circle from the cork.

She empties her cup, and tops it with fresh tea from the pot, sticks the knuckle of her ring finger in the liquid to test the temperature, and makes a face. "Solas? Would you possibly do me a favor and warm it up? I need the liquid at a higher temperature to reduce the surface tension. I'll explain what I mean in a second."

Solas glides over and passes his fingers over the cup in an elegant flutter. The tea steams. The elf parks himself beside her, on the other side of Cole. Dorian joins them next, occupying the place Amund vacated.

"Ambassador, may I borrow a map of Thedas?"

Josephine, with only a brief hesitation, pulls a large scroll and unfurls it, securing it at the four corners with miscellaneous objects — including the glass paper-weight. Margo studies the map briefly, notes the maritime nations, and smiles at the ambassador.

"One more slightly rude request, if I may. You wouldn't happen to have a piece of silk on you? A handkerchief, perhaps?" And now I will make this rabbit disappear. Where is a top hat when you need one?

Josephine smiles amiably and hands Margo a purple square of excellent quality silk.

Margo nods her thanks. "This part is going to take some time."

She talks through it, letting the explanation absorb her attention lest she succumb to nervousness — the whole needle rubbing business is tedious and vaguely... well, not obscene, exactly, but somehow questionable. "I know I could ask one of the mages here to electrify the needle, but I told you that my world does not have magic, so for the sake of authenticity...I'll use static electricity. Which of your nations has the best navy?"

Based on the fact that she gets three different answers, Margo decides that she has managed to secure a reasonably captive audience.

"Bull, how do Qunari ships navigate? Do you use the stars? Stay within view of the land?"

The Qunari chuckles, leans back, and crosses his arms over his massive chest. "Nice try, Blondie. You know I'm not about to tell you that in front of a Vint, right?"

"As if the clothing irons you call ships could rival ours!"

"All right. Rivain has a good navy, but they're too busy pirating known trade routes to go exploring. Qunari are excellent seafarers, but mostly military, right? Tevinter, according to Genitivi, has a solid naval force but has some problems with excessive privatization, if I understood correctly. Antiva has a vast trade fleet. So." She points her finger an inch beyond where the map ends, level with letters that spell " Amaranthine Ocean ." "What's there?"

Silence.

"Bad weather," Cassandra finally answers.

More silence.

Margo smiles. She has gambled right so far. "Since we have representatives from different groups, I won't ask you to reveal national secrets, so I'll talk through it myself, and you can correct me where I'm wrong. You all have star maps, and they are pretty good, yes? You might even be using an astrolabe or equivalent. But the weather over here is garbage, as Cassandra just confirmed, and so sailing on the open sea becomes too risky. You're stretched thin as it is with all the wars, so no massive state project is in the works, and most of your trade is with the dwarves anyway, so over land. I'd love a map of your trade routes, if anyone is willing to share."

On her right, Solas draws closer, allegedly to get a better look at where she is pointing. His hip brushes hers. On the other side of them Dorian smirks. Cassandra drifts to where Cullen is propped against the table and peers at the map, then tilts her head for a better look. She frowns but then nods briskly. Josie pulls up a chair. Torquemada steps up for a better vantage point, and crosses her arms over her chest. Vivienne doesn't move from her seat.

"So the question is, where is your magnetic compass?" Margo looks up. "Do you have naturally occurring magnets? Pieces of ore that attract other metals?"

Silence. Uncomfortable glances. Puzzlement... but not from everyone. Dorian, for his part, definitely looks like he knows exactly what she is talking about. Bull has a poker face.

"All right. I've been thinking about this. In my world, the magnetic compass was developed by the Chinese and used for navigation by the Song Dynasty, if I recall correctly, though naval history isn't my area. So where is yours? The first option is that you don't have naturally occurring magnets — like, say, magnetite — which is unlikely, because you have iron and you mine other metals as well. And you have mages who control electricity, so you could magnetize things, no problem. You need wire to make an electromagnet, and you're already using copper coil in your alchemy." Margo is vaguely cognizant that she is somewhere in between babbling and talking to herself, but it beats panicking. "So. Either some of you already have the technology, but have been keeping mum about it. Or something about the physics is different. Something that would make a compass unreliable, for whatever reason." She draws a breath. "See, put simply, my world has a magnetic field around it that attracts or repels particles in patterned, predictable ways. There is a north and south pole." Margo dips her finger in the tea and draws a crude diagram on the table. She looks up. No glazed over expressions. Puzzled, but attentive. She isn't sure whether that's good or bad. "Your bees, ravens, and probably other animals most likely navigate by sensing your planet's magnetic field because of the biologically precipitated magnetite — or equivalent — in their bodies. In fact, based on that incident with the ravens in the Hinterlands, we know something can mess up that sense of navigation. At least that's how our animas do it. Now, my world has learned to replicate a similar capacity by using a magnet to detect permanent north — the polarity of our planet's magnetic field, in other words. Which greatly facilitates navigation in bad weather, as you can imagine."

Unsurprisingly, the first to nod at this — slowly — is Bull.

Margo decides she will save the happy dance for later, stops rubbing the needle, and drives it through the cork, trying not to prick her finger in the process. "Aw, crap. I talked too long. Solas, do you mind warming the tea again?"

The elf arches an eyebrow, but his lips twitch, and he complies readily enough. "Why are you insisting on heating the liquid, lethallan?"

"Because I want the force exerted by the surface tension of the water to be lower than the magnetic force acting on the needle. Water — and everything else — is made of smaller elements arranged into molecules. At higher temperatures, the molecular bonds become... less sticky. That's how you get water and other liquids to vaporize. Anyway, I'm not sure it'll work, but it's the best I've got."

She plops the cork into the water and watches with bated breath. The circle spins — painfully slowly, of course — but then stabilizes in a single direction. Margo moves the cup, jostling the needle. Waits. Sweat is prickling between her shoulder blades.

The needle wobbles, takes its sweet time, drifts about lazily — but finally realigns.

"What's that way?" Margo asks, her voice hoarse.

"South," Cassandra answers.

She nods. "Ok. Ok, I'll take south. As long as it's consistent. Now." She lifts her teacup compass and carries it gingerly to a different part of the table. Blows on the needle and cork to spin it. Her audience drifts with her, one by one. They watch. The needle rotates at an excruciatingly slow creep, quivers, then slowly stills.

South. Margo exhales quietly.

"Shit, Blondie. You're gonna have to explain this thing one more time." Margo glances at Bull. The interest there isn't friendly , per se. But it is interest.

Cullen, curiosity propelling him forward, stands up and walks over to the cup.

Suddenly, the needle spins again — much faster this time — and shudders into place, its eye locking on the former templar.

"Aha!" It's not exactly dignified, but Margo finds herself bouncing in place. She somehow manages not to clap her hands. "I knew there must be something! Now, Commander Rutherford, why would you emit a magnetic field?"

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Cullen's natural magnetism (cue cackle)._

 _Next up: Back to the Evie problem, with some overdue conversations on the way_


	60. Chapter 60: Truth, Or Something Like It

_In which everyone's attention is on Cullen._

* * *

Cullen's befuddled expression is so genuine it actually manages to extract Vivienne from her chair and draw her closer for an evaluative visit. She takes a perfunctory glance at the teacup, then stares down her nose at Margo.

"Oh, I do remember the Marquis de Beaufort bringing one of these trinkets to a salon, three... four years ago? Much more sophisticated than whatever primitive contraption the creature devised here, of course." She makes a point of addressing herself to Josephine and Torquemada — and certainly not to the creator of the aforementioned primitive contraption. "Gold, diamonds, crystal casing, silverite needle. Very pretty. Poor dear heart claimed it could detect lyrium. Needless to say, it did no such thing — it simply spun in place. Terribly gauche, of course, but he was considered a luminary in his day when he still taught at the University. I suppose one must be careful with one's invitations."

"And yet, this version shows no signs of confusion at all." Dorian, who has drifted closer to Cullen as well, taps his chin pensively, eyes alight with an impending witticism. "It would appear that even inanimate objects find Commander Rutherford irresistible."

Cullen coughs, blushes painfully, and glares at Dorian with an expression that manages to combine wounded puppy with man-eating lion. Margo notices Bull's cocked eyebrow and bites the inside of her cheek. Cullen takes the opportunity to step to the side, safely out of the needle's range.

Dorian magnanimously pretends not to notice this maneuvering and continues. "There was a year when Alexius experimented with a mineral he obtained from some of his more... unusual contacts. Not much to look at, but terribly expensive." Dorian's cheeks dimple with suppressed mirth. "As I recall, the little rock tended to collect unattached metal objects. Alexius had hoped to use it as an alternative to the traditional methods of amplifying spells, but nothing came of it: it did not lend conclusive results and was simply too impractical to obtain. Would such a thing fit your description of 'magnetic ore,' Mistress Duvalle?"

Margo suspects that the sudden choice of formal address is intended to accomplish a symbolic reclassification of her social status. She also notes that, in present company, Dorian relabeled Gereon to Alexius. Smart man. She nods. "I would have to see it, but the description fits."

"Those unusual contacts, they wouldn't happen to be from Kal'Hirol? Supposed to be merchant caste, armed like Carta?" Bull leans forward, elbows on knees — which has the felicitous effect of emphasizing the incredible breadth of his shoulders.

Dorian feigns innocence. "Fancy that, I'm afraid I cannot quite remember."

"Dorian, my dear, while I can abstractly appreciate your misguided desire to help the thing talk itself out of its corner, it should be plainly obvious that this pitiful demonstration proves little. It certainly does not indicate that the creature is from another world. This is, at best, child's play." Vivienne dignifies Margo with a glacial look that only partially masks the underlying squeamishness. "I do not know what is more vexing, that it" — she flutters her perfectly manicured fingers, a gesture that manages to be at once elegant and dismissive — "should think that it revealed some heretofore unknown truth about the universe, or that we should somehow be dazzled by it, like gullible fishwives in some forsaken village."

"Thank you!" Margo beams at her — and the amiable expression is only about fifty percent forced. It is a testament to how exhausted she is that instead of being offended, her mind conjures a hypothetical painting titled Demon Dazzling the Fishwives. She's pretty sure it would be a Rubens. She bites her lip, trying to stave off the stupid giggles. She has to stop responding to direct threats with idiotic merriment — it will get her killed. The Iron Lady for her part looks thoroughly unamused. "That is precisely the point," Margo finally manages with a passably serious moue. "Well, not the fishwife-dazzling part — your earlier point. It is child's play, if you know the principles behind it. In fact, this experiment is how we teach our kids about magnetic fields. The ease of replication is the result of, give or take, eight hundred years of other discoveries on top of it that tell us why it works."

"Your tamassrans teach this?" The fact that Bull is not questioning the premise of her world having teachers — or kids — is not lost on Margo, so she confirms it with a friendly nod and files it away as a win.

"The only thing that this might convincingly prove is that the poor marquis entertained odd company in his old age. Unless it plucked the model from another addled scholar's mind?"

"The argument is not in the technology, Madame Vivienne, but in the distinction it implies," Solas comments with calculated casualness. His voice softens as he turns his attention to the disk bobbing on the amber surface of the tea. "If I have followed your reasoning correctly, lethallan, you did not choose this demonstration to parade your world's intellectual achievements, but to suggest that similar techniques become dismissed as meaningless in one environment by virtue of the inconstancy of their effects, while in another they offer pivotal insights for deducing universal laws, thus furthering new forms of understanding."

Margo's head jerks up. Solas has not only grasped the entire point of her gambit with the compass but has stepped into the role of her intellectual dance partner in the scaffolding of pas and contre-pas required for her to explain it. She could kiss him. In fact, she has to exert a tangible effort to refrain from doing just that — rapt audience be damned — and so she sends a prayer to whomever might be listening that Cole does not choose this moment to provide commentary.

"I won't if you don't want me to. Would you like to know what he thinks?" Cole inclines his head to the side, as if trying to decipher a picture presented from an unusual angle.

"Nope," Margo says hastily. "Not at all."

This earns them both uneasy looks from the peanut gallery, but mercifully Cole does not press. Margo releases her breath. It could be worse. Experience shows that it can always be worse. She looks up at Solas and offers him a grateful half-smile. "Yes, that's precisely it. I don't think there is anything I could do that would prove who I am. All I can do is to convince you all of what I am not." She should leave it well enough at that, but the sudden idea doesn't just come knocking — it barges in with streamers and maracas. If the connection between her world and this one is based on the Fade, could ideas... drift in some way? Could such drift be happening in both directions? Her mouth runs ahead of her ability to muzzle it. "My world has some truly bizarre intellectual dead-ends that would require an entirely different cosmology for them to make sense." Fortunately, she manages to stop herself at the edge of the abyss that is a rant on homeopathy. "I wonder whether some of them actually are what a magnetic compass would be to you?" Conversely, what would she find if she were to go through this world's archive of kookie scientific ideas? She prudently bites her tongue before she can blurt this out, but her expression must be evidence enough.

Solas's eyes narrow, with surprise or speculation or both, and then his gaze turns inward on some arcane horizon. She collects a curious look from Dorian for her troubles.

"More smoke and mirrors," Vivienne comments, but there are again notes of unease in her tone, and it refocuses Margo's attention, flipping her perception of the situation on its head. Oh dear unspecified and unmerciful deity, this isn't just a game of one-upmanship for the Orlesian mage. The Iron Lady really does believe her to be a demon or something like it. The disgust is not a show — it is a visceral reaction barely contained under the carapace of decorum. Ice scuttles down Margo's spine. Madame de Fer is not the sort of enemy one wants afraid if one cares about one's life expectancy.

"I can imagine a few of my compatriots might be quite interested in the practical applications of such 'smoke and mirrors.'" Dorian's comment aims for flippant, but falls askance, acquiring the edge of a warning.

Before the unpleasant silence can set up camp, Josephine takes it upon herself to dispel it, and Margo reiterates her mental oath of unconditional support in the case of a political coup. "While I am loathe to interrupt this lively debate, there is the issue of Commander Rutherford." Josephine inclines her head in the direction of the man in question.

"I was not aware that I had become an issue, ambassador." Cullen has cycled from puzzled, to flustered, to vaguely annoyed, to annoyed but possibly amused, to exhausted, and settled at the unlikely crossroads among all five emotions.

"Oh!" Josephine's abashed expression and demure smile suggest that the apparent "slip" was, in fact, deliberate. "Not at all. If I understood correctly, you are, as it were, a counterargument to Madame Vivienne's position. Perhaps Mistress Duvalle's device is sensitive to lyrium after all? One way or another, I do not see why it would not merit further testing."

"There are at least fifty witnesses who can corroborate that the Marquis' endeavors exhibited no discernible results at all."

"Provided the device was indeed the same," Solas offers, the habitual mask of courteous neutrality firmly in place.

"Doesn't look like it responds to mages, or the rest of us. Could test it on other templars," Bull proposes. "If not, then we know it's something about Cullen."

Margo bites back an excited yelp. Of course. Bull — secret police spook that he is — is a smart cookie. Could it be something about the fact that Cullen is weaning himself from lyrium? What does lyrium do to one's biology, exactly?

The former templar blanches, takes an awkward step further away from the table — with an expression like he fully expects the accursed compass to run up and start doing embarrassing things to his leg — and practically trips over Cassandra.

"While all of this is fascinating, haven't we... ahm... digressed?" After some throat clearing, Cullen recovers his composure and turns to Margo, the only trace of his earlier discomfort in the speed at which he moves — as if he is in the middle of battle and not discussing magnetism over tea. "Since it was my request that started us on this path, I suppose I should offer my thoughts on the results." He doesn't wait for a confirmation before rushing on. "Mistress Duvalle, is it? I am inclined to believe you. Or, rather, I do not believe you a demon, or mad, or a spy. Beyond that, I am not sure I am equipped to draw any definitive conclusions." A glance at Cassandra. After a brief hesitation, the Seeker takes a step forward.

"I am in agreement with Cullen, up to a point."

Margo decides that this sudden ringing endorsement is a panicked gambit meant to steer the conversation away from the awkward topic of Cullen and Chantry-regulated substances. So she smiles, and she doesn't have to fake the gratitude in her expression one bit.

"Good." Torquemada, silent until then, gestures for those who remain standing to take a seat. "This is neither the time nor the place for a round of patriotic jousting among Orlais, Tevinter, and the Qun over who is most enlightened." She pauses, letting the statement sink in. "Let us leave the gadget's fondness for Commander Rutherford aside for the time being." Margo blinks. Was that humor? "From a certain perspective, I suppose it is also irrelevant, agent, whether you are, as you claim, an outworlder — or something else. What is important is that by this point I have absolutely no doubt that you are not Maile. And if so, then the only thing that matters is not whether this change occurred, but when it did, and whether you gain anything by lying about it. Let us look at what we do know already. Whatever you are, you have managed in your time here to secure allies within the inner circle. Both Solas and Dorian vouch for you, and I doubt that such support is driven by preexisting solidarity. You hold sway with the Herald. And yet, you have, on the surface at least, acted in the interests of the Inquisition. You have also managed to conceal your identity for long enough that I cannot imagine you would come forward now if you were merely acting out of crude self-interest. You claim your... situation is the effect of the Herald's magic, and that this magic precedes Therinfal?"

Margo meets Torquemada's gaze, and, for the first time that she can remember, there is a sense of something locking into place — a brief moment of mutuality. "Yes. I can attempt to provide you with more proof — material or rhetorical — if you ask, but I am doing it all in the service of this one point."

Torquemada nods slowly. "You said you were a historian? Josie, do we have a calendar within easy reach?"

Josephine locates a vellum — seemingly via echolocation or some other arcane sense, as the scroll was entirely entombed in a mountain of paperwork.

"How should I address you? After all, I suppose it remains to be seen whether 'agent' will still be an accurate descriptor by the end of this conversation."

Margo shrugs away the ominous pronouncement. "I have spent enough time in your interrogation room that a first-name basis seems appropriate."

Leliana cocks an eyebrow. One corner of her lips twitches briefly — but it could be an effect of the light.

"Very well. Margo, then. Start with the beginning." Leliana pores over the calendar. "With dates, if you would."

Margo transmutes a nascent groan into a polite smile. Apparently, the erroneous belief that historians fetishize dates is truly universal. Before she can comply with the request, however, Vivienne stands up. Margo is not at all surprised to see the Orlesian say her goodbyes — to everyone except for Cole and her. She is surprised — and a little bereft — when Cole wanders off, with no goodbyes whatsoever except for briefly resting his cheek against the top of her head, his arms thrown awkwardly around her shoulders in a loose embrace — all of this followed by a shuddering sigh. That odd feeling of plenitude washes over her again. And then it is as if he was never there at all.

Dorian stifles a yawn, but, with Iron Bull firmly planted on his crate and looking ready to absorb new intelligence, the mage pours himself more tea, warming it with a quick flicker of his fingers. Margo's eyes dart around the room, and she sees her own bone-deep exhaustion mirrored back in the faces of those who remain. Next to her, Solas settles into a chair. Margo steals a glance. It suddenly occurs to her that even against the backdrop of their collective weariness, late evenings suit him poorly. No wonder he longs to escape into sleep. He looks... worn thin. As if, by the end of the day, whatever shadows haunt him twine into an invisible cocoon — one from which he will eventually emerge other|than.

Margo straightens with a jolt, a sudden, awful feeling of vertigo twisting her stomach in a knot. She must have drifted off for a second. But that thought — and the voice that uttered it — didn't feel like hers.

"Are you well, lethallan?" Just Solas, worried and weary.

"This day has overstayed its welcome," Margo mutters, heart still beating too fast.

"I could not agree more." Cassandra pours herself the cold dregs from the pot. Josephine winces at the unappetizing remains, and absents herself — presumably to call for fresh tea.

"Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of postponing. The quicker we have an accurate record of the events, the quicker we can begin making informed decisions."

Maybe Torquemada is a vampire and sleeps during the day, hanging upside down from the chantry rafters.

One problem at a time. Margo takes a few seconds to organize her thoughts. The Fade stuff — beyond the initial attempt to conjure up Maile's memories — should be reduced to a strict minimum and brought up only if asked directly. No one needs to hear about her little escapades with the resident apostate. No one needs to hear about Imshael. And no one needs to hear about Baba, or huts on chicken legs.

Whatever else this is, it is a military operation — viewing people as assets comes with the territory. They will likely want to know how she escaped Redcliffe. And they will want to know how far her alchemy skills can be pushed.

But, most importantly, what they need is a way to make sense of Evie.

Right. Margo exhales. All history is creative redacting.

"It started with deathroot," she begins.

It takes longer than hoped, and by the time she is done Margo is slumping in her chair and contemplating an Adan-style nap.

The scratching of Torquemada's quill continues for another ten seconds or so, then the redhead returns the sharpened raven feather to its inkwell and leans back, expression unreadable.

Bull trains his good eye on Dorian, then switches his scrutiny to Solas. "So you didn't just fail to tell me who she was before we all went to Redcliffe. You also failed to tell me she didn't have military training." For a few seconds he looks genuinely stunned. Then he whistles low and shakes his head from side to side. "Bas saare-fucking-bas."

Josie winces.

Solas shrugs, unperturbed. "Perhaps you should give credit where it is due, Iron Bull. It would appear that you were none the wiser, and neither was your famed organization in providing you with the relevant intelligence." He smiles thinly. "Consider that some secrets are so far outside the ordinary that they resist the crude extraction methods your ideology employs by virtue of a failure of its imagination."

"You know that if Alexius had killed her it'd be all on you, right?"

"Enough!" Torquemada glares at them. "You can amuse yourselves with finger-pointing during your leisure hours at the tavern. For now, we have one priority: closing the Breach. Everything else will have to wait."

She turns to Margo, that familiar speculative expression back with a vengeance.

"You have a knack for adaptation and survival, but the Iron Bull is correct. You are not military. Still, we would be remiss not to make use of the talents you do possess. Ironic. I suspect you would, with training, make a competent bard. It is something to consider."

"Leliana, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Perhaps we should ask Mistress Duvalle what she would like to do? We do not even know whether she would wish to ally herself with us when given a choice — perhaps there are other options she is considering?" Josephine hands Margo a fresh cup of tea with a lovely smile. Margo nods gratefully. The question of alternative paths is a pretty fiction, of course, and Josephine knows this perfectly well, but Margo would be a horrible ingrate if she didn't appreciate the face-saving gesture.

"What options, Josie? The Avvar?" Torquemada chuckles mirthlessly. "I strongly suspect that even if given the choice, Mistress Duvalle would opt to remain. Such is the nature of the bonds of affection and loyalty we forge, that they tether us in place, sometimes against our best interests." The spymaster's expression morphs subtly — ice thawing over dark waters — and Margo recognizes it with an unpleasant hollowness in the pit of her stomach. There is no gloating triumph, no grim satisfaction at having won another round. Leliana watches her with pure, unadulterated pity. "Is this not so... agent?"

Margo opens her mouth to respond. And then closes it.

"Indeed." The spymaster sighs. "It is late. You will report back to me tomorrow. I will have Maile's file for you to peruse. I am afraid that the best I can offer you is to subordinate your... predecessor's identity to the new persona we will devise for you." She looks up, her blue eyes still holding a trace of something close to sympathy. "If I may offer a piece of advice, agent... whoever Margarita Duvalle really was, I suggest you take a few hours to grieve her. And then lay her to rest."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the Dutch Golden Age_

 **Next up** : Evie, templars, baths, empirical testing, (not in that order)


	61. Chapter 61: Forking Paths

_In which Margo makes a questionable decision_

* * *

By the time they are in view of the apothecary, the awkward silence that trails them from the war room and all the way into the wintry darkness has accrued so much gravitas that Margo suspects it's on the verge of developing its own tastes in music and demanding pocket money. She tries to break it several times, but the words simply evaporate before they can pass her lips. The alley leading down to their shared courtyard is too dark to discern Solas's expression, but even without the visual input, she has the impression he is seething quietly — she keeps expecting him to start emitting the ominous whomp whomp whomp of some finicky, dangerously overheating energy source about to go critical.

"I believe you may have acquired a neighbor."

Margo almost jumps out of her skin.

"I acquired... What do you mean?" She rubs her eyes, trying to mobilize the scant remains of whatever is left of her intellectual capacity.

Solas takes pity on her, following the oblique statement with a surprisingly unambiguous explanation. "In your absence, the Tranquil alchemist you rescued from Redcliffe was assigned to help Master Adan. I believe he stays in the apothecary, as well."

Oh. Margo considers this revelation and decides to preemptively shove the vaguely unpleasant emotional response it produces under the rug — at this stage, mostly out of principle. If she can't identify it, off it goes with the rest of her unmentionables.

"On the upside, it would be nice to spread out the work Adan likes to outsource to me," she offers, though her tone falls somewhat short of a full-fledged endorsement.

Solas does not dignify this with a response, but neither does he make any move to leave. They stand in the middle of the darkened courtyard, and the frost is biting through the soles of Margo's boots. The left one is beginning to leak, too. Meanwhile, the elf is traipsing about in footwraps.

Margo decides to expedite the process. "Solas, what is it?"

When he speaks, his voice is a careful study in neutrality. "You are willing to go to great lengths to protect the Herald. I wonder if she knows how fortunate she is to inspire such steadfastness."

Margo is grateful that the darkness is obscuring her frown. For all of its casual tone, it is hard not to read the utterance as a jab.

"Solas..." She is too wrung out and entirely too cold for this, but a debt is a debt. "Thank you for backing me up earlier — I apologize that I forced your hand and put you at risk. I owe you."

Despite the gloom, she notices the flinch — he recoils as if slapped.

"I... No. There is no debt, fenor." His voice is oddly subdued. "But you are loyal to a fault. This quality could easily be exploited, to your detriment. The spymaster will demand no less than for you to give yourself over to their cause, much as she has herself."

Margo huffs something that might, with imagination, be mistaken for a chuckle. " Their cause, Solas?" Since he offers no commentary, Margo continues. "Leliana presumes there is this thing called Margo Duvalle whose willing sacrifice she can use to ... bind me, I suppose. It's the standard slippery slope scenario: you've already given up whoever you think you were, so what's another compromise? And on it goes. But that's just the thing. I think too much in terms of ecosystems for such an essentialized view of the self. We are the products of our entanglements with others."

" Eco- systems?"

"Systems of interdependencies between multiple lifeforms and their environments, if you will."

He remains silent for a few heartbeats. "A compelling image. But interdependency does not demand self-sacrifice, and yet you would put Evelyn's well-being above your own? Tell me, would you still risk yourself if you knew for certain that rendering the Herald Tranquil would not place her ability to close the Breach in peril?"

Margo forces herself to unclench her jaw and take a breath. "Considering that every time I catch sight of my reflection my first instinct is to scream, "Who the fuck is that?" — excuse my Orlesian — the last thing I'm willing to do is to take liberties with my chosen loyalties. There is little to anchor me in place as it is." She is perfectly aware that she sounds testy, but there should be a daily limit to the amount of self-explaining one is forced to do. Besides, she has the distinct feeling the elf is fishing for a specific reaction or response — one that she is not giving. But instead of coming out with whatever is niggling him, he has set off to circumambulate the proverbial bush on a trajectory so wide it might as well be an orbit.

Another pregnant pause. "You continue to surprise me, lethallan." He doesn't sound pleased about that — the dominant sentiment seems to be resignation. "The Inquisition's current leadership demands your collaboration without offering so much as a place to rest your head in return."

"It's called the Inquisition. Based on the homonymous historical phenomenon in my world, assuming that allies subsist on the rage of the devout and the tears of heretics probably comes with the territory."

His chuckle sounds more exasperated than truly amused. "There is enough room in the house I was allocated to accommodate another occupant."

"Anyway, Adan has been welc—... Pardon?"

"Unless you would find such proximity objectionable."

When she is finally able to produce speech, Margo congratulates herself on not stammering. "Solas, you do realize what assumptions this will generate?" How exactly did they get from something that looks, sounds, and feels like an argument — or, minimally, a tense conversation — to... whatever this proposal is?

"Of course." He appears suspiciously chipper about it. "Or, rather, what existing ones it will corroborate."

Margo narrows her eyes, though her undoubtedly excellent rendition of the hairy eyeball is lost to the darkness. "Just... why? Why now?"

A flicker of light from Solas's fingers, and an odd silence settles over them, nocturnal sounds muffled by whatever spell he has cast. The magic has the added benefit of shielding them from the wind, and Margo relaxes her shoulders a fraction. When Solas speaks, his voice is low despite what she suspects is the magical equivalent of soundproofing. "Your facility with the Fade is remarkable — and, considering the Avvar's offer of shelter, remarked upon. And yet I could not help but notice that you modified your narrative in such a way as to obfuscate this aspect of your presence here from the assembled members of the inner circle. I am certain that, were you to mention it, the advisors would seek to find a use for any talent you might manifest."

Margo stuffs her hands into her pockets. "I modified the narrative because I didn't want to draw attention to your and Dorian's involvement any more than I already had."

She is pretty sure he nods. "Precisely." A strange vehemence — just this side of anger — creeps into his tone. "Do you not find it curious that no one inquired as to your living situation, or asked you about your sources of income?"

"They know perfectly well what my situation — well, Maile's situation — is already." Ah. It has taken her entirely too long to follow his circuitous meanderings, but finally she is beginning to see the logic behind the obfuscations. "But yes, I suppose a swift change of status would raise inconvenient questions."

Inside their muffled bubble, Solas begins to pace. "If you are to stay in the apothecary, you will reside in the company of an indifferent observer who will see no reason to withhold information if asked. The Nightingale is no more ignorant of your living arrangements than Lady Montilyet is likely to forget her manners and fail to offer hospitality to a foreign guest — unless such obliviousness serves the greater good. Inaction is itself a form of action, fenor."

Margo sighs. "For a humble apostate, you have a remarkable facility with court intrigue. We have a conversation about that pending, yes?"

This time, his chuckle is amused. "Provided we survive closing the Breach."

"Your point is that you are concerned that Clemence will be used to spy on me?"

"Eventually. My calling you elgar was no mere figure of speech. Your presence in our world is akin to that of a spirit in many ways — and never more so than when you dream. We do not know what consequences this will have on a nearby Tranquil."

She can see the point. But the way he has staged the conversation does not escape her either: a proposal made in the middle of a dark, freezing courtyard, with nothing but the precarious envelope of his magic to shield them from prying ears and frostbite, seems symbolic of something more profound — a move that equalizes them on the surface, but serves to obscure the uneven distribution of risks. He is wearing footwraps and doesn't seem to suffer any ill effects, after all.

"What are you trying to achieve, Solas?" Margo braces herself for more circuitous talk.

He tenses, then sighs quietly, some of the rigidity draining out of his posture. "I want to see this world restored, although the costs such restoration will no doubt incur fill me with sorrow. I want to keep that which I care about from harm, although I harbor no illusions that I should succeed." His voice is light, melodic with a soft yearning. Margo stills. There is an odd ring of truth to what he says — all the more so because she can almost hear the things he leaves out. As if he is willing for her to guess the contours of some broader context — a strange pattern of speaking that reminds her of Goran and Cole. And, incidentally, of Baba. "For us to have a fighting chance, we must ensure the Breach is sealed, then seek the artifact that caused the rending of the Veil."

Artifact?

"You have a sense of what might have caused the Breach?"

He hesitates. "I have my suspicions. There is a precedent for such magic, though all that presently remain are references in ruins and faint visions of memory in the Fade. Echoes of a dead empire."

She knows of only one conspicuously dead empire in Thedas — thank you Brother Genitivi — which, come to think of it, is odd. How old is sentient life on this world? If it is anything like Earth, you shouldn't be able to walk around without tripping over some lost civilization or another, so why the scarcity? Unless the good scholar had a political agenda in reducing the number of defunct societies to one. Meanwhile, the only other historically-minded fellow she might ask about this is standing right in front of her — and is apparently trying to maneuver her into bunking with him.

Margo firmly stomps out another hysterical fit.

There was a point to this madness. She raises a finger and wags it for emphasis. "You are saying that the magic that caused the Breach might have something to do with ancient elves, aren't you?"

"I believe you would call it a working theory."

Shit. If he is right, this bodes extremely poorly for contemporary elves. Whatever the ancient elves were, their modern descendants are uniquely vulnerable. She has seen how elves in the Inquisition's employ carry themselves — and Genitivi completed the rest of the sociohistorical picture. When they are not outright enslaved as they are in Tevinter, elves seem to be exploited in unfavorable labor arrangements and confined to ghettos. And the Dalish do not appear to be doing particularly well, either — much like the Avvar, they have been pushed to the edges of ecological viability through this world's variant of settler colonialism, as well as through overt campaigns of violent displacement. If Solas is right, they will get scapegoated.

Right. Nothing builds ideological solidarity among a dominant group like the occasional genocide.

"Oh, Void on a stick, I hope you're wrong. There needs to be a plan for damage control if that turns out to be the case. Because, if your world is anything like mine, there will be bloodshed if this gets out, and more repercussions for the Inquisition. Evie is going to be divisive as it is — there will be enormous pressure on her to take on some stupid symbolic stance."

"For now, we would be wise to ascertain whether my suspicions are correct."

Margo narrows her eyes. "Do you have the concept of the royal 'we' in Common? Because I have the feeling you have been using it extensively."

Another hesitation. "Stay with me, at least for the night, fenor. Then decide tomorrow where to reside, after you have spoken with the spymaster. In either case, we should not continue this discussion here — the muffling spell conceals our words but betrays the effort of their concealment."

Margo sighs. He is probably a menace at chess. "Let me get this straight. If people assume we are... otherwise occupied, as it were, they are less likely to suspect that we are discussing politically sensitive topics?"

She can hear the smile in his voice. "It is fascinating that the two activities tend to be viewed as mutually exclusive."

Margo doesn't quite manage to suppress the snort. "Conniving snake."

"A frog no longer, then? I suppose both are cold-blooded creatures."

"Are you? A cold-blooded creature?" Ah, shit. She needs to put on the brakes. This will lead nowhere good. Although she is no longer sure which would be the worse decision — to share his bed or his politics, whatever they might be. That there is an agenda, however concealed, she no longer doubts for a second.

"I am not." A pause. "There is a bedroll I can use, and you are welcome to the bed. But please, unless you find the cold enjoyable, might we move indoors?"

Margo shakes her head, then shrugs. "Fine. You win. Lead the way."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Haven's inhospitable climate._

 _Next up: A view from the other side_


	62. Chapter 62: Frozen Moments

_Content warning: mildly smutty, mildly philosophical, 100% silly_

* * *

Margo selects a bench in the corner of the hut to deposit her meager garb and proceeds to occupy herself with various necessary rituals — hanging up the sheath containing Molly on a hook, taking the books out of her pack so that the pages don't get damp and moldy, brushing her teeth with Goran's propolis paste — a flurry of activity that has the added benefit of stalling.

Once she runs out of things to do, some awkward and terse negotiations ensue over who will take the bedroll. Margo points out that she needs a bath and should therefore be the one using the already questionably clean travel gear. Solas proceeds to wordlessly ozonize her, and then insists once again that she take the bed. It goes on like that for a few more turns. Eventually, the weariness begins to feel like a physical weight pressing her into the ground, so Margo suggests, with no small degree of fatalism, that they have both slept in close quarters before anyway, and, really, is there a point to standing on ceremony at this stage? Solas dutifully protests, but not too vehemently.

In the end, the bedroll remains unused.

They settle against each other a bit skittishly under the familiar threadbare blanket. The awkward proximity slowly turns into an embrace that seeks to define its own contours without bringing them into the light of voiced negotiation. Margo has the distinct feeling Solas is letting her set the terms, so she huddles closer, tucking her face against his collarbone. He smells pleasantly of thunderstorms, pine resin, and the ubiquitous woodsmoke that not even his cleaning spells can fully exorcise. With Margo against him, the elf stills, as if suddenly unsure of what to do with himself. And then his hand comes up to tangle loosely in her hair. His other arm snakes beneath her ribs, encircles her, and pulls her in. Another few heartbeats of anxious immobility. She hooks one leg over him, and shifts, closing the remaining distance. There is a flustered, mildly indignant, "Oh." He angles his hips, his thigh pressing between her legs, and Margo shudders with a ragged sigh. It takes every ounce of her willpower not to move her own hips in invitation to the next logical steps. There was a thought somewhere in there about why this would not be a good idea, but it feels rather irrelevant at the moment. Even through the coarse fabric of his tunic she can feel his heart hammering a staccato rhythm.

"There is something I would welcome your opinion on, if you are willing to meet me in the Fade." Solas's voice is low and rough.

"And here I thought you were trying to get me into bed to talk politics."

There is something delightful about his surprised laugh. "I have gotten you into bed — talking politics would simply be an enjoyable side benefit." His hand detangles from her braid and cups her jaw. He tilts her chin up, seeking eye contact. "However, sleep would serve us both well, and this is a matter that should not be delayed indefinitely." His thumb settles into tracing the contour of her cheekbone, his touch feather-light, but his expression turns uneasy. "Have you visited Haven in the Dreaming?"

Margo frowns. The only two cases where she was in the Fade version of Haven involved Imshael. Her heart rate picks up — not at all pleasantly. How many days have passed since she struck her bargain with the cosmic asshole? Not a month yet, she is certain of that, but time is ticking. Maybe the bastard has one of those Advent calendars where each day elapsed comes with a little chocolate.

"Fenor?"

"Only the inside of buildings, as far as I remember. The bathhouse and your hut, to be precise." She notes the crease between his eyebrows and lets one hand drift to the back of his neck, her fingers tracing the muscles there — gently at first, then a little more firmly, coaxing the tension out. A long time ago, Baba had tried to teach her bonework — the art of mending injuries with her hands — but Margo turned out to be a mediocre pupil. Another gift of the matriline that mostly went to Jake — or perhaps would have awakened in her daughter, had she lived. That sort of thing often skips a generation, Baba explained, with a look of mild disappointment. Margo never managed to get past the basic skill of easing the knots.

Still, sometimes even simple things are good enough. She watches Solas's eyelids drop to half-mast and his lips part on a soft exhalation — before he refocuses his gaze.

"You have not seen the Breach?"

It is as if someone doused her with cold water, shocking her out of her drowsiness. "It is not the same from the Fade? What does it look like?" The cocktail of dread and curiosity makes for a heady mixture, and Margo forces herself to slow down her breathing.

Solas nods. "The Fade is an amalgam of infinitely multiplied perspectives and thus offers no single answer. I admit that I am curious about how you might experience the Breach from the Dreaming side, though it would be prudent if I were there with you, in case there are... unforeseen consequences." She can feel his arm tighten around her. The fingers of his free hand trail along her hairline, brushing away the stray tendrils.

Margo can feel the tension draining out of her, which has the felicitous effect of freeing up some mental capacity for a quick analysis. "Because, as you said, I rendered as a spirit of sorts when I was pulled here... or what was the Elvhen word for it? Elgar ?" She frowns. "Is the translation into Common an accurate one, by the way?"

"No, fenor, it is a vast oversimplification."

"Everything is a 'vast oversimplification' with you," she chuckles, and she jabs him gently in the ribs with her finger, to a satisfying little "hmpf." "What do you see the Breach as?"

His chest rises with a sigh. "I would be happy to share it with you afterwards — provided you stop attempting to tickle me. However, the Fade responds to the expectations of the dreamer."

"Aha. So whatever you tell me would potentially affect my perception?" She mulls this over. "Interesting. Is this because, in the Fade, the act of perceiving actually modifies the object being perceived? Wait a second, then wouldn't your act of perceiving affect my act of perceiving in real time as well? Or is it an independent phenomenon — could we be looking at the same thing but seeing two different interpretations?"

He hesitates before answering. She has the feeling he is formulating — or rather, trying to translate — some linguistically unwieldy concept. "The Fade is not a uniform landscape, as you have no doubt discovered. However, one common feature is the absence of clear separation between the subject and the object of perception. Nothing exist 'independently,' and thus one dreamer's point of view is no less valid than another's — both constitute the memories that give the Dreaming form, like specks of moisture that, collectively, might coalesce into a cloud. Although such an analogy is flawed."

"Can there be a point of view from which such 'clouds' are perceived in their totality?"

"No. As with a cloud, at most you could encounter it from a singular direction, but its shape would then be a function of your point of view."

Margo opens her mouth to respond, then has to stifle a yawn against Solas's shoulder. She wants to continue this conversation — the model works well enough for inanimate objects but does not explain what happens when there are multiple competing agents doing the perceiving — but she is finally warm and almost criminally relaxed. Was there really a time when she thought that this mattress was too hard? Apparently, sleeping in dungeons rearranges one's idea of creature comforts.

"Ah." His soft chuckle reverberates through her. "We can resume this discussion on the other side."

"Convenient, that." She yawns again and lets her eyes drift closed. The last thing she hears before fading out is a quiet " dream, heart " whispered into her hair.

The transition to Fade-side is almost seamless, likely because Solas is modulating the process. The two of them are in the same position as they were when she closed her eyes — the only indication that this is the Fade is the subtle green tint of the light filtering through the window.

"The cloud analogy..."

She doesn't get a chance to finish. There is a flicker of surprise in his expression — as if he did not expect her to follow — and then Solas rolls over her, and covers her mouth with his. For a brief instant, before the kiss turns deep and greedy, Margo has the bandwidth for a half-formed thought about whose dream this is, but it dissipates like mist on the wind. And then she loses herself to the sensations.

"Why are things easier for you on this side?" she manages when they finally break apart. Her voice sounds embarrassingly breathy.

He rises up on his forearms and peers down at her, his eyes crinkling with a soft, fond sort of amusement — the expression heart-wrenchingly unguarded. For a second, she gets a glimpse of what lies beyond the hazy glow of desire — a flash of something like bereavement long since turned chronic, and beneath it, in the murky depths, a complicated emotion, the ingredients of which she cannot identify beyond an abstract sort of longing for respite.

"It is the Fade." His gaze has an almost tactile quality, like the memory of a touch. "Everything one experiences here is a matter of perception, and thus, with the correct approach, one is less constrained by the impositions of physical embodiment. You do not mention it often, but you still find your waking body uncomfortable, do you not?"

"Not uncomfortable per se, just... difficult to ignore. Anyway, that is not quite an answer." Margo deliberates between two equally tempting possibilities: to see whether nipping at his throat — exposed and all the more inviting for it — might produce an interesting reaction; or to pursue the puzzle of the Fade as a matter of collective and presumably competing points of view.

Unable to pick, she opts for both.

"If Fade bodies are products of perception, too, then who — or what — is doing the perceiving? Or the experiencing?"

"A philosophical question."

"Actually, a practical one. Say, were I to do this..." She proceeds with her plan — and, as it turns out, there is a particularly sensitive little hollow right underneath the corner of his jaw. Grazing it with her teeth not only produces a satisfyingly dramatic shudder but also backfires spectacularly because he retaliates — with dividends.

There used to be more clothes, Margo is quite certain of that — it is a mystery where most of them have gone. He keeps his kisses deep but his touch light — more allusion than claim, more promise than act — his fingers trailing the contours of her skin's sensitive zones without ever resolving the ambiguity. Where his hands pass, her body tingles with an odd afterimage — as if the experiences of touching and of being touched overlap in a haptic version of double exposure.

In no time at all, he has her arching against him and on the verge of incoherent begging — which, at least, has the benefit of confirming Margo's original hypothesis. "You sneaky cheat!" she breathes, the indignation clearing her mind a little. "You never told me the point of view can travel — that's... that's..." She stammers. "Not playing fair!" At least, she can feel vaguely vindicated that her predicament is reciprocated — the elf's pupils are blown so wide that the outer rims of his irises are reduced to narrow silver slivers. She shifts a little, accommodating his weight, and is rewarded with a quiet growl. His Fade avatar offers a rather precise physical facsimile of all the symptoms of arousal, and her thoughts scramble again with the raw need to bridge that final distance.

"Sneaky?" Solas glides against her just so, and Margo gasps. "What aspect of this strikes you as 'sneaky'?" His voice is strained. His hand travels under her tunic — or whatever flimsy garment the Fade decided to substitute in its stead. "Terribly, inexcusably unwise, yes." His thumb traces the outer curve of her breast, the movement excruciatingly unhurried. Another gliding motion that lingers with the suggestion of more — if not for the rather unsubstantial barrier of fabric that still separates them — and Margo tries and fails to bite back a low moan, her hips bucking to meet him. "Risking attracting unwanted attention from demons, certainly." His fingers continue on their journey, as if he is outlining her without ever settling into anything more demanding — and suddenly the touch is not nearly sufficient. Her hands seek skin, and soon enough her palm is trailing down the smooth ridges of his abdomen. For a brief second she marvels at the physical verisimilitude of his Fade avatar — down to the labored breathing and racing heartbeat — but then her hand slides lower and his ragged gasp dissipates all capacity to think. "Something we should not be indulging in at this location, absolutely." Another movement of his hips, much firmer now. Heat coils in her belly. Margo fists her free hand in his shirt. Apparently, the dream bothered even less with that particular article of clothing. She can only register its texture, but not any other aspects of it.

Maybe there is a surplus pile of clothes in some pocket dimension of the Fade — all items meant to be used as props in raunchy dreams, and thus discarded anyway, so no one invests too much cognitive effort into what they look like. For all she knows, the shirt might be a particularly heinous shade of mauve.

The sheer absurdity of the sudden thought somehow manages to break through the haze. That, and the vaguely tormented look in Solas's eyes.

Margo stills. Since banging under a cloud of guilt-ridden self-loathing overridden by a kind of misguided grim resolve strikes her as a particularly joyless exercise, the least they can do — if they are to travel this path anyway — is provide each other with some levity.

She hooks her legs around him — mostly to prevent the elf from repeating the gliding trick, because one or two more of those and she will lose all ability or motivation to think coherently — and circles her arms around his neck.

"Yes. Sneaky. Sneaky and devious." She somehow manages a teasing smirk, but then her gaze is drawn to his mouth. She swallows. Focus. Think. But the temptation turns out to be too much, and she traces his lower lip with her thumb. She aims for sweet, rather than suggestive. He nips at the offending digit, but his eyes are clearing, lust and a regretful sort of guilt now vying for space with a glimmer of curiosity, and, once again, cautious amusement. She feels his body relax against hers, the thrumming tension dissipating a fraction.

"A ringing endorsement as per usual, I see. Very well. What gave you the impression that I am being 'sneaky'?"

She grins up at him. "I'm not that easy."

He looks confused, alarmed, and then vaguely offended. "I would never..."

"No, no, not in that sense... never mind, there is no way to solve this gracefully. What I mean is that I had a theory, and you provided some answers. Here, help me up."

A brief hesitation, and then he maneuvers them into a sitting position, Margo now straddling his lap. She is not certain this is an improvement, as far as sticking with the tamer version of the program is concerned — but it will have to do.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost seems that competing points of view here are a... matter of unstable equilibrium. They are not independent variables, in any case."

"An intriguing turn of phrase. Care to elaborate?"

"Earlier, when you were... ahm… exploring..." She wonders if the heat in her cheeks corresponds to a visible blush. "It was as if my experiences of it had an echo of yours." Solas lifts an eyebrow but, bless him, does not comment. "Well, in any case, we are collocated in the Fade, but the vantage point is skewed towards you, isn't it?" She needs a less clunky vocabulary for this. "What I want to know is whether the median point of the dream can be pushed back, as if along a shared sliding scale."

Solas cycles through a kaleidoscopic array of expressions too fleeting to read, then his face shutters. He does not release her, however, his hands gripping her hips almost painfully. "It is rumored that a skilled mage may invade and exert influence on the dreams of others, if that is what you mean, but such action would most likely be violent in nature." His tone is a tad too neutral.

"Ah. Interesting. But that's not what I am trying to articulate." Margo settles more comfortably. "There is no point from which one can grasp the totality of all perspectives, right? But what about at smaller scale? Could one move the vantage point around between, say, two subjects? Could I move all the way into your perspective, or you into mine? I don't mean through violent means, but, rather, consensually?"

This time Solas adds a quiet chortle to his raised eyebrow, his lips quirking at one corner. "Any particular circumstances under which you would wish to undertake such an experiment?"

Bastard. " Collaboratively ," Margo corrects. "No need to be smarmy about it, it's a perfectly legitimate question." Her eyes widen with a sudden insight. "Wait... Alternatively, could different viewpoints be merged completely, producing a third, rather than an overlay between two?" She practically bounces up and down with the excitement of the idea — if only she'd had the concept of the Fade to draw on, explaining Hegel to her students would have been so much easier. The bouncing, come to think of it, is rather unkind on her part. "Could such a thing be attempted? If not by dreamers, then what of spirits? Cole almost seems to do something similar in the way he mind-reads."

Solas swallows, and for a second he appears gripped by an odd, contradictory panic. Margo has the distinct impression that her words have transmuted, acquiring some added, hidden meaning for him. Finally, the elf shakes his head. "It is not a simple question. I do not believe that... merging perspectives is possible under the current circumstances. At the very least, this close to a massive tear in the Veil, the Fade is unpredictable and nothing of the sort should be pursued." He lets go of her hips and captures her hands in his, his gaze clouded with some overcomplicated amalgam of feelings. "Vhenan..." Margo starts at the almost forgotten moniker. "We should not linger. We allowed ourselves to get carried away, but such behavior can attract unwanted scrutiny. Haven is protected, after a fashion — as you shall see — but I would not wish to try our luck more than we have." His lips quirk. "Not here, in any event — some places are safer than others."

At some point during the last part of their conversation, the Dreaming returned their clothes.

"Walk with me." He helps her stand.

Margo nods, and follow him out of the hut. She has to bite the inside of her cheek. His back does offer a rather nice view — except that his shirt is unquestionably, unapologetically mauve.

She wonders if he is aware of this fact.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by my inexplicable amusement at mauve shirts._

 _Next up: The Fade side of Haven is worse than you thought_


	63. Chapter 63: Maxwell's Demon

_In which Margo proposes a theory on Evie's magic, and Haven is far worse than you thought._

 _Fair warning: this ends on a pretty big cliffhanger. I'll try to get the next update up as soon as I can._

* * *

In the chartreuse glow, the masonry of the chantry appears ethereal, almost translucent — although that's not quite the right description. The structure — soaring, majestic and so very fundamental on the Waking side — feels flimsy and a little cheap, like a Hollywood movie prop for a low budget fantasy flick. In fact, most of Haven has that quality — except for a few buildings that, unremarkable as they are architecturally, feel thick with a sense of "thereness." The "thicker" structures are also curiously loud — as if woven from whispers, though Margo cannot make out the voices or words. The puzzle of the uneven architectural landscape clicks into place quickly enough, and she gapes, heart fluttering at the incredible implications of it. Oh dear unspecified and unfathomable deity, once she realizes what she's looking at it is as if a bomb has gone off somewhere, and she is stunned into speechlessness by the distant shockwave.

She can see historical depth. Not through the filters of her training, mind you. See it as the unmistakable qualia of the world itself.

But this is not what has her digging her nails into the palms of her hands, teeth clenched against an involuntary shudder of revulsion.

"Holy hell on a sesame bagel. All right. Explain to me what I'm looking at."

Solas casts her a side glance. "I take it you are able to see it. I must admit I sometimes forget how peculiar your idioms can be."

It's not quite sarcasm — it's wry yet gentle — but it still makes Margo conclude that the awful thing surrounding the temple — and expanding into a sort of dome over much of Haven — is setting his teeth on edge, too.

"Says the guy in the mauve shirt," she retorts, a bit caustically, because trading barbs —however much on autopilot — distracts her from the desire to turn on her heels and bolt in a random direction. "Yes, I can see it. Whatever it is."

Solas takes a perfunctory look at his cuff, offers a half-shrug, and returns to his contemplation of the chantry. "Not to your liking?" There is a tiny little shift to the color — or, rather, to her perception of the color — and the mauve quickly moves from the territory of "washed-up-aging-ex-frat-boy-on-Spring-break" and into "Leftist-artist-in-smoky-Bohemian-coffeeshop." It also brings out the stunning violet hue of his eyes.

Margo throws up her hands with a disgusted groan. "You know what? That's it. I give up."

"I doubt you are capable of giving up, but that is a conversation for another day. What do you see?"

Margo scrunches her brow in a look she normally would reserve for that special undergraduate paper that starts with " From time immemorial... "

"An impressively large, crinoline-shaped formation made of... veins? Interconnected vessels?" She cocks her head to the side and squints. "Tentacles?"

Solas nods, as if her inarticulate lexical fumbling makes perfect sense. "It is a set of wards — old, and yet remarkably intact safe for the area over the dome." He motions with his hand, designating an uneven gap in the dark, writhing, glistening mess — calling it a lattice feels a bit too poetic, though there is certainly a method to the twisting strands of... whatever it is. The awful thing would have made H.R. Giger throw in the towel and retire to paint charming maritime landscapes.

"Is it some kind of magic?" Margo asks, her eyes drawn to the jagged edges of the hole. It's ringed with independently moving cilia, like a particularly repulsive sea anemone.

"A species of blood magic — or, at the very least, blood magic was deployed to give the wards their power."

"I know that the Chantry strongly disapproves of it, but if this is indeed what blood magic looks like, I can't say I blame them. It is..." Margo breathes through a wave of queasiness. "Most unpleasant."

"It is possible that what you perceive is a reflection of the amount of blood that would have been expended to support a spell of this caliber, and, by extension, of the death and suffering that it would have required."

"Oh." It feels like something inside her shakes loose and enters free fall. "Fuck me."

"I presume this is more idiomatic language, rather than a request?" His lips quirk.

Margo forces her gaze away from the horrid thing — it is magnetic, like watching a car crash in slow motion. "I see your sexual innuendo- qua -distraction, and I raise you a calling-you-on-your-bluff." She waves in the general direction of the grotesque cocoon. "Unless you are legitimately asking me whether I find this sort of thing stimulating, in which case the answer is a resounding no."

She is perfectly well aware that she's babbling — but it has the benefit of taking her attention away from the awful imagery her mind is trying to conjure relative to the arithmetic problem of units of blood required per spell segment and human bodies required per unit of blood. The vaguely malignant sprawl is simply massive .

All right. She can deal with this. Treat it as a logistical issue. The Writhing Crinoline of Doom is a ward, which presumably means that it is designed either to prevent something from entering or to stop something from exiting. Margo is entirely unsure which is the less alarming prospect, because the "structure," such as it is, comes equipped with a hole — a very conspicuous hole, located right over the chantry dome. Now, what is the relationship between clause (a) — namely, Crinoline of Doom — and clause (b) — namely, hole in yonder hellish cosmic petticoat?

"If it were, in fact, a request, I suppose we could arrange ourselves to face in the opposite direction, though I fear the view would not be much of an improvement."

Right. What big teeth you have, dear granny. The opposite way is the Breach. She isn't going to look. No, sir.

Margo gives Solas the stink eye. "Now you're just taking the piss."

"Yes." He pauses, still contemplating. "I suspect you rather enjoy it."

"Has anyone mentioned to you that you're an arrogant ass?"

"Not once."

Margo just shakes her head. Solas's fingers lace through hers, his grip on her hand a welcomed anchor. "I also find that humor has the benefit of distracting me from the nausea. I take little pleasure in contemplating this abomination." His tone is light, but there is a tightness around his eyes that Margo quickly identifies as anger.

"Do you have a sense of what the wards were used for?"

Solas tilts his head, his expression pensive. "I can venture a number of guesses. While the Chantry denounces blood magic, it also does not understand its nature. There is an antithetical relationship between blood magic and the Fade."

"An antithetical relationship?" Margo attempts to imagine what he might mean — does Fade magic stand in an agonist-antagonist relationship to blood magic? Or is one a kind of reaction inhibitor for the other? Unless chemistry is the wrong framework to draw upon. "Genitivi's history talked about ancient Tevinter magisters entering the Fade physically through, essentially, the mass murder of enslaved elves, yes? Provided there is some historical truth behind it, is this antagonism between the two forms of magic why they chose that route?" Margo frowns. Some half-buried idea draws her attention and she tries to capture it before it wiggles away, back into the mucky mess that passes for her knowledge of this new world. "Wait a second, is blood magic the same order of phenomenon as the Veil thinning at sites of great battles or mass death?"

Solas nods slowly. "The Veil is a vibration of sorts that forms a barrier to separate the Fade from the waking world. Blood magic can be used to interfere with this vibration — to pull a spirit through and bind it to a mage's will, for instance — but it may be equally deployed with the opposing goal in mind: to repel the Fade, like oil and water."

"One thing I am still rather fuzzy on is whether the Veil is a natural phenomenon, or an artificial one. If the latter, cosmological speculations on the Maker aside, then it seems to me that making it vulnerable to blood magic was an... oversight?"

The elf gives her a very odd look.

"Anyway, sorry. Cosmological tangent."

He clears his throat. "Not so tangential as all that, but a question we might pursue some other time?" He returns his gaze to the writhing lattice. "These wards predate the Breach. It would appear that someone created them either to keep the Fade and its inhabitants at bay or to contain something within. In either case, it would explain why Haven has been spared the appearance of new rifts and is inhabited by remarkably few demons, despite its bloody history."

"Whatever the wards were, they're compromised now. Something blew a hole through them." Margo, who is not above stating the obvious, has a horrible theory about what that something might have been. It would be lovely to be wrong.

"And very recently."

She sighs. No such luck, then. "Evie?" she asks.

There is a weary hunch to his shoulders. "Perhaps indirectly so, but that was my initial thought as well. The damage was not present prior to the trial."

Margo decides that if she never has to visit Fade Haven again, she won't shed one measly tear.

"So, let me get this straight. Either the killings in the chantry thinned the Veil and interfered with the wards, or Evie's pulling spirits through, however partially, did the same." But that leaves them with the biggest puzzle of all — what precisely Evie's magic is. Margo turns her gaze away from the Tentacled Petticoat of Beelzebub and finds a nice, innocuous spot in the snow to stare at while she thinks. "Indulge me as I talk through this, all right?"

"Always." Soft and velvety.

She can't help the small smile. Incorrigible flirt. "It seems that what you are saying is that there are, at the core, two fundamental types of magical energy, for lack of a better term. One is derived from the Fade, and the other from blood. So far so good?"

Solas nods. "That is one way to parse it, yes." He looks genuinely intrigued over where she might be going with this thought — and Margo promptly flushes with pleasure and then proceeds to kick herself for it. Oh, but it really is the ones you want to talk to that are trouble. Thank you, Baba, for your ever-prescient advice.

"Ok. So the next logical level of abstraction is what makes the two commensurate, right? Or at least comparable. Blood suggests life force, so let's say that blood magic is derived from, specifically, biological life. Which is to say, from the lifeforce of embodied beings on the waking side. Does it mean, then, that Fade magic harnesses the life force of spirits? Because, if so, then what I want to know is where this leaves necromancy."

There is a very long pause. "It is... an interesting model, albeit unorthodox from the perspective of modern magical theory. I would be curious as to how you might use it to explain the Herald."

He does sound... curious. But also oh-so-very cagey. Margo narrows her eyes. "I have a theory in that regard."

Damn it, but the elf's "intrigued, keep going" face will get her up shit creek eventually, because it's the one thing she doesn't seem able to say no to. She has never been one to chase intellectual approval — so why is she now, and why with this man in particular?

"Very well. You ready?" She takes his smile as sufficient encouragement. "I think Evie's hex is not some curse or spell imposed from the outside. I think it's inherent to her, but twisted. Wait, wait, don't frown, this will make sense..." She lets go of his hand and begins to pace. "If we assume necromancy itself to be a kind of game of probability, then it's the simplest explanation. Let's take it apart, yeah? There is a particular probability, however low, that at any given moment a spirit might cross the Veil into the waking world. There is a particular probability that a soul might cross the other way — and, effectively, die." His expression shifts from puzzlement to sudden understanding, and Margo tries to ignore the jolt of electricity that this sends through her. She is gesticulating wildly, but she's always talked with her hands, and there is no helping it at this stage. "Now, let's assume you could cheat, and skew this probability. Isn't that what the luck siphon does, at its root? Those odds of crossing depend on infinitely complex and changing variables, sure, but if Evie's magic works on the odds themselves , then everything else simply..." Margo waves her hands, suddenly grasping for the right words.

"Falls into place to fit them," Solas completes for her. His eyes are positively luminous.

Margo makes a herculean effort not to jump up and down and clap her hands like an excited toddler. "Yes! And if so, here's the kicker — from this perspective, magic in your world and magic in mine are not so fundamentally different! The difference is in degree, not in quality. Because, you see, then you can view all schools of magic as simply ways of skewing the odds — the odds of a lightning bolt striking at a designated target, the odds of something spontaneously combusting, the odds of a wound healing... And that's how my people have been thinking of magic." She almost adds " from time immemorial ."

He is nodding about half-way through her hypothesizing. "Yes. Yes, an elegant theory. I will have to think on whether the practical aspects fit with your description. In any event, it would appear that the Herald is capable of controlling a process that modern necromancy considers outside of its purview." He scowls in mild distaste. "From what I understand, necromancers believe that a soul passing through the Veil displaces a spirit in the process, thus making it available for a mage to draw into a corpse."

"Right, your necromancers have a conservation law in play. I can work with that." Margo quashes the sudden urge to smooth her thumb over the sharp line of Solas's arched eyebrow and grins, probably a little dementedly. "You know, this would effectively make Evie into Maxwell's demon."

" Whose demon , heart?"

This time, she has no doubts whatsoever that her grin is inappropriately gleeful, and, to make matters worse, Margo has to fight the urge to kiss the damn elf — Cosmic Corset of the Apocalypse in the background notwithstanding. There is absolutely no reason why Solas's expression of amused confusion should be so fetching, but... well. And, to be fair, he is eyeing her with a peculiar look that suddenly makes her sympathize with the hypothetical subject position of things typically classified as "dessert."

"It's a thought experiment proposing a scenario that violates the second law of thermodynamics. Imagine you have a gas distributed between two chambers connected by a narrow aperture..."

Margo goes through the explanation of the original law and its paradoxical refutation quickly enough, and, judging by Solas's expression and occasional questions, he follows her description with a kind of pleasurable ease. By the time she is done with the classical model — complete with the annoying little demon serving as the gate-keeping bureaucrat sorting the particles into faster and slower ones — his face has acquired a dreamy, speculative cast. Margo decides that he has already absorbed the theory and is transposing it onto a new context.

The same faraway quality infuses his voice when he speaks. "It would explain most of what we have witnessed since Therinfal. The exchange between the templar and Envy fits the pattern you propose, as does the Herald's demonstration in the chantry. Still, much remains unclear. Not least of which is how she managed to acquire so much control in so limited a time." When Solas turns to face her, his eyes are alight with whatever mental calculations are firing off as he fits the model to what he knows, and Margo has a brief, vertiginous moment of déjà vu. "We also do not know the exact mechanism behind the magic that brought you here, since it occurred before Cole's intervention. If your theory is correct, it would appear that something bent the odds very far indeed — I doubt it was solely the Herald. I will have to think on this further."

"Whatever it was, it had something to do with the Breach — which is what you brought me here to see." Margo sighs. Well, no time like the present. "All right. I am going to stop facing the Cosmic Armature of Supreme Unpleasantness, turn around, and behold the Cosmic Fuckup That Is the Breach. Would you like me to give you a detailed description of what I see?"

"Only if it involves further vivid analogies."

This time, Margo is the one to seek his hand. "You know... you are in a suspiciously chipper mood, all things considered."

A devilish little glint dances in Solas's eyes. "Is my good humor so surprising?" He pauses. "I can imagine far less pleasurable fates than a night spent in your company."

There is warmth in his smile and heat in his eyes. Margo sighs. Apparently, there is no escaping the warm and fuzzies — not even in the Fade.

"Sweet-talker." Then she takes a deep breath, releases it, and turns towards the Breach. "Oh. Well, it looks just like—"

For the split second before her gaze is entrapped by the non-Euclidean depth of the swirl and her consciousness warps, stretches, and splinters, ragged pieces of her essence dragged violently towards the event horizon of the incomprehensible thing above her, Margo has time for a single thought.

She still hasn't found out whether there really are dragons.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Maxwell's demon, which, in later refutations, was shown to still require energy and generate (not decrease) overall entropy through its evaluating and sorting activities. Oh, and H.R. Giger, who, in case you were wondering, is the Swiss surrealist artist who gave us the aesthetics for the Aliens films._

 _Next up: Spirit essences, (auto)biographic readings, confessions._

 _PS: By this point in the story, you probably know that I stretch the canon and the "typical" game experience quite a bit - it will be continuing in that vein, but I will still try to stay within the range of plausibility._


	64. Chapter 64: Hungry Ghosts

In which we learn a little bit more about what happens to spirits, and Margo is rescued through a timely intervention.

* * *

It's not pain, exactly. It is a feeling for which she has no description or road map, aside from what a piece of lint might experience when sucked in slow motion into a vacuum cleaner. The part of her that still coheres is annoyed by this: barring very specific psycho-spiritual techniques Margo has only read about — and that did not come prepackaged as a convenient app on a smartphone — being present for one's own death isn't exactly something most people get to practice. At first, it is relatively easy to hold the pieces together, as she (they) are collectively pulled into (apart) what looks like an Escher-esque tunnel that is simultaneously coiling in(out)ward. Time elapsed brings the subjective experience of ac(de)celeration. She feels herself parsed into disintegrated components, her awareness of herself stretched to the breaking point between aspects that had always been held together. Consciousness multiplies, thins out, and flickers at the edge of final fragmentation. For a brief moment — though time has lost relevance — she (or something like it) can see herself as a self-enclosed weave of luminescent fibers, each strand complete and sufficient in itself, yet fused with others to form a greater totality. (The thing that used to be) Margo looks (to whatever remains to observe it) like an egg — or something vaguely oblong and encapsulated — and the shape of it feels right , but also incomplete, as if it is meant to fit somewhere, and not just float about like useless cosmic flotsam. Its isolation is tragic, and a little comical, in that vaguely embarrassing sort of way — even as (especially as) it unravels — though there is no entity left that might be experiencing amusement or embarrassment or sorrow in witnessing this process, and thus the only way to account for these emotions is that they are experiencing themselves.

This far into the tunnel, whatever-remains-to-observe suddenly realizes that it(she) is not alone — that it is superseded and overtaken by other feelings-in-themselves. It watches the warm, softly pulsating awareness-that-is-hope float past, victim to the same entrapment — it is much lighter, a delicate gossamer mesh to its(her) bulky entwinements. It freezes in place and slowly dims at the center of the tunnel that involutes into the surface of something unfathomably huge. And then, instead of vanishing completely, the elegant gossamer being changes. Slowly, in moth-eaten bits, then faster and catastrophically, its very essence is torn and rearranged. It be|comes other|than. In this form, it can pass through the tunnel easily — whatever milieu awaits it on the other side no longer resists it. Whatever-remains-to-observe shrinks back, struggles against the forward flow. The new shape feels wrong, as if the awareness-that-is-hope-no-longer can never again fit with anything, not even itself, lost to the singular impulse to re|make everything it can reach, in a monstrous craving to relieve the howling agony of its isolation by turning everything into itself — or extinguish it.

A Hungry Ghost.

Converted, it shrieks, enraged and despairing, then fades away through the tunnel that is also the flip side of a surface.

Despite the struggle, the forward motion reduplicates. Awareness-that-is-amusement is propelled past it(her). The creature sparkles, light grey, its movements awkwardly endearing as it flails against the undertow. It looks at once like a chubby tardigrade, and a shiny ball of downy fuzz. Whatever-remains-to-observe doesn't want to see the little thing become altered. It(she) tries to turn heavy and sluggish and clog the tunnel. Reaches for former fragments, scattered but not yet gone. Panic sets in. Too small, too light. Pieces scattered, too far. Forgetting. Groping for the memory of a familiar shape, for something that would offer an anchor before the corruption eats everything away...

"Plucked!" Baba announces with a sharp clap of her dark, bony hands — the sound like a branch snapping — and follows it up with a self-satisfied cackle. Margo returns to herself with a lurch. For a very long moment, she has no idea where — or who — she is. The only solid, recognizable anchor is the old woman.

Slowly, as if from underwater, she takes in the inside of the hut. Enough context returns to make her wonder whether it is just the regular old village house from her memory or the folkloric mobile home of the poultry persuasion. Her eyes are drawn to the collection of wooden dolls — dark, heavily stylized, and seemingly rudimentary carvings all lined up like sightless homunculi along the the sideboard that houses Baba's eclectic altar. Fear yanks at something inside her. Margo can only recall two occasions when Baba brought out these particular ritual objects.

She tries to move, but the world tilts off axis, and she finds herself on all fours, dry-heaving over a chipped enameled basin. When she finally straightens, the dolls are gone, and Margo wonders if she imagined them.

Baba, unperturbed, proceeds with her work, stooping over the clay stove, where a cheap aluminum pot, pockmarked and fire-stained, rests in a cooling water bath. The old woman strains the pot's contents — a viscous orange liquid with a strong, nutty, medicinal aroma — into a mason jar. Even through the nausea Margo can identify the oil as an extraction of sea buckthorn. Her task completed, Baba drops a cheesecloth, stained bright yellow, into a pail of soapy water at her feet.

"Well, little thistle." The mild disapproval is unmistakable. The fringe of Baba's dark kerchief sways at her wrinkled nape like a hundred little snakes. For some reason they remind Margo of the cilia on the Infinite Farthingale of Calamity that encases Haven. "If this is how the fates measured, and how they cut, then I suppose so it must be." The old woman's angular shoulders heave in a sigh. "Run with your wolfling for as long as the forest path takes you, but if that foolish man gets you into trouble for a third time, old Baba will have to pay a visit, hmm?"

The feeling of dislocation bursts like a soap bubble, and Margo is suddenly all there . More than all there — she feels exactly like her teenage self being lectured by Baba on the nature of boys (and, by extension, men). Lectures that typically revolved around dubious agrarian metaphors, mostly relating to cows, milk, and financial transactions; trees, dogs, and urine; and, a particularly inspired one, about seeds, plows, and "well-trampled roads." When the plum harvest had been good enough to make pálinka and Baba got talkative, she would take a piece of timeless wisdom about the importance of a woman's virtue, twist it on its head, and impart it with a serious face and an impish glint in her eye. It boiled down to four general maxims: don't get caught (if it matters); don't get pregnant (if you don't want it); don't hold back on a well-placed kick (when not interested); and don't get too attached (for reasons that Baba thought beneath her dignity to explain). It was all mortifying — and hilarious — until Baba summoned the boy in question and sat him down at her kitchen table for a "fear your elders" talk.

Margo maneuvers herself into a chair, her hands still shaking. The nausea recedes slowly. A loud mewling sound draws her attention, and she lifts the vinyl tablecloth to take a look at whatever is making the ruckus. A scrawny grey kitten with owlish yellow eyes yowls at her from under the table. She picks it up and places it in her lap. The kitten immediately curls into a ball and starts purring like a tractor engine.

"You mean foolish elf . Not a man, technically speaking." Margo winces. She can hear the defensiveness in her feeble rebuttal.

Baba casts her a side glance, graphite gray eyes sparkling with a mixture of humor and irritation. "Wolfling... woodling... up-worlder...root-dweller. As many labels as there are eyes to behold. Heh. If it runs around with both hands on its stick, waving it every which way and hoping that you might trip up and fall on it, I say it qualifies."

Margo groans and flushes with embarrassment. You'd think she would have outgrown this, but no. "Why do you call him a wolfling?" There, that's a reasonable, adult question.

"Bit lean for a full grown one, hmm? Long winters, I suppose." The sunbursts of wrinkles around Baba's eyes deepen, and the old woman chortles, the sound like dead leaves crunching underfoot. Her mirth doesn't last. A chill creeps into her voice, all merriment scattered as if on a November wind, and Baba's tone turns dark and hard as stone. "When his time comes, my soul, then you will settle on which skin to wear. Until then, there are earlier berries to pick. That lidérc you collected is bad news. Cunning old thing, the lidérc , always wanting more than it lets on." Baba's gnarled fingers, stained with the tawny oil, begin to fit a paper lid over the glass jar.

Margo frowns. The lidérc made an occasional appearance in some of Baba's spookier bedtime tales, but Margo's memory on the subject is muddled — something about magical chickens? And, for some odd reason, demonic lovers, though how those two particular functions combine leaves Margo perplexed and vaguely disturbed. Still, she manages an educated guess.

"Do you mean Imshael?"

Baba huffs something unflattering but affirmative.

"Do you know what he wants?"

The old woman scowls in distaste. "What they all want, heartling. A meal, a ride, and a piece of your soul." She waves her hand dismissively. "On this branch or any other, some birds sing the same."

Margo shivers and suddenly realizes that she is wrapped in an old and achingly familiar woolen shawl, soft from repeated use, the crochet work intricate but fraying with age. There is a chipped mug with a steaming tisane in front of her. She recognizes the smell immediately. It was one of Baba's trademark formulas, made on the basis of Daucus carota , and sought after by most adult women in the village.

The hint is not what one might call subtle.

"Baba!" This time even her ears burn. "I hope this is not on account of the lidérc . Because the whole magical chicken turned satanic lover thing is confusing."

"Yes, yes, wouldn't do to mistake one for the other, hmm?" Baba shrugs. "Little herbs have an íz too. Why should they only work on one side if the íz travels on both?" The old woman chortles quietly, probably at the double meaning of " íz. " "Whoever it is you bring to your bed, better safe than sorry."

Margo takes a cautious sip of her tisane, winces at the bitterness — though it has the benefit of dissipating the last of her nausea — and huddles deeper into the shawl. "I do appreciate the reminder," she offers.

Baba gives her a quizzical look and then shakes her head, again with that twinge of mild disapproval. "This is no mere reminder, little thistle. Only a fool thinks that he can shove a world's horrors away under an old blanket, and lull himself into believing it's not all still there, waiting. This side is no less real than the other." Baba ties off the paper lid with a piece of twine and stores the sea buckthorn oil on a shelf above the stove. Satisfied with her handiwork, she takes a seat across from Margo. An ornate shot glass filled to the brim with a murky golden liquid appears in front of her — as if it has always been there. Baba takes a sip, follows it up with an approving nod, and sets the glass back down. "Above or below, all doings bear fruit, heartling. So drink."

Margo stares at her tisane like it's about to start yodeling. Is Baba actually suggesting what she thinks she is suggesting? Because if there is a line in the sand to be traced right around where suspended disbelief ends and certifiable insanity begins, the claim that one might get knocked up in a dream seems like a perfectly good place to start drawing. Sure, it makes for a splendid excuse if you're a medieval nun. "It was the Devil! He visited me in my dreams!" Right, sure it was. Does the Devil look a bit like that itinerant tinker? Margo swallows. Oh Void on a stick, what if the damn nuns weren't lying?

Although that, in itself, is marginally less bizarre than the concept of a Fade-based contraceptive actually working as intended.

All right. She is going to chalk this one up to dream logic. And the reminder is not a bad one, considering her present situation and its likely trajectory. Better safe than sorry indeed. "Baba, how did you get me out of the Breach?" There. Reasonable questions.

Baba's expression remains impassive. "You called, and I came — such is the way of things on this side. Gave yourself a scare, yes?" There is something distinctly sly about Baba's smile. "Gave your wolfling a scare too, I'd wager. Shouldn't keep him waiting for too long — there's no more hair on that head of his head to tear out, hmm?" Another dry, not altogether benign cackle, and then Baba's expression grows solemn again. "Sometimes we must die a little to learn something new. Do you see now what befell the branch from which you sing, my heart?"

Margo tries to put the experience into words. She scratches the kitten behind the ears absentmindedly and gets rewarded with a truly seismic rumble. How such a small thing can reach this decibel level is anyone's guess.

"I saw... I think I saw how spirits are transformed into demons. It really does look like the Breach sucks them in and corrupts them in some way, though I don't quite understand what causes the corruption. Or why the corruption would facilitate their transfer. It is as if it is much easier to cross over as a demon?" She takes a breath, braces herself for the question. Even thinking of uttering it feels blasphemous, somehow. "Baba... are you a spirit? By which I mean, are you a local spirit taking on my grandmother's persona to communicate with me?"

That positively tickles the old woman, because she is overtaken by a raspy, infectious, completely irreverent fit of hilarity. Tears stream down Baba's grooved cheeks, and she dabs at them with a corner of her stained apron.

"Oh, little thistle, you are a laugh." When she finally quiets the last of her chortling with a fortifying sip of pálinka, Baba smiles and crosses her arthritic fingers under her chin. The metal crown on her left incisor catches the tawny light of the oil lamp overhead. "And what sort of spirit would you peg your old Baba as?"

Margo shrugs, and grins. "I have to pick just one? Sarcasm would be in there..."

Baba huffs another chuckle, but the amusement doesn't stick. "The answer is only as good as the question, my heart, and the question is no good at all. What makes a spirit, hmm?" She leans forward, dark eyes glinting under sharp eyebrows untouched by white. "I am as you are, rootling, as we have been since the breath soul and the shadow soul grew as one. You came to me and I taught you, as my mother's mother taught me, and her mother's mother taught her . How to plant and pluck, how to know the íz, how to put things together and make them sing with one voice. We will see if it was enough. There is much work and little time."

Margo shakes her head, trying to clear the fog. Her mind is groggy and sluggish with the increasingly dream-like quality of the vision, and the effort to ask questions instead of simply accepting Baba's pronouncements is becoming almost unsurmountable.

"Baba... I don't quite understand," she finally manages, desperately trying to stabilize the dream, but something is rolling it up like an old tablecloth. "What work are you speaking about? Why is there little time?"

"Before all else, there is a blanket to patch," Baba says, and pats Margo's hand, her fingers dry and rough like tree bark. "Beware the lidérc and his murky mirrors, my soul. Things such as he do not keep their promises."

And then, there is nothing but darkness and the faint scent of wormwood and juniper.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by the lidérc, because if you're going to have an evil mythological entity, then it might as well be multifunctional.

Next up: Wake side

A quick glossary, for your convenience:

 **Lidérc (Hungarian)** :  
Hungarian DEMON that shape shifts into three guises: an INCUBUS, a household spirit, and a death omen light.  
The incubus liderc takes advantage of loneliness, masquerading as long-absent lovers and dead husbands. Once in its victim's bed, it returns night after night and fornicates with the victim, who has a wasting death. A giveaway to the demon's true nature is that it has one goose leg and foot, which it keeps hidden in trousers and boots. The household liderc takes the form of a featherless chicken that suddenly appears or is hatched from an egg carried in the armpit. It can never be banished once it has entered a home. The only solution is to keep it busy with tasks; otherwise, it will destroy the occupants. The flickering light liderc is a ball of light (ignis fautis) that hovers over the household where someone will soon die.

 **Hungry Ghost** : In different branches of Buddhism, a type of supernatural being, condemned to desire more than it can consume. Often depicted with large belly and tiny mouth.

 **íz** : In modern Hungarian, this word means taste. Its archaic meaning refers to shamanic beliefs (Tengerism) in soul dualism among the Magyar: the existence of a breath soul attached to the body (lélek) and a shadow soul (íz) which can travel freely between the three worlds.

As ever, thank you for your reviews/follows


	65. Chapter 65: Hypotheticals

In which Margo comes back

* * *

When Margo opens her eyes, the first thing to come into focus is Solas's face, and for a second or two before her perception readjusts she is struck by how alien he looks. It is ironic, then, that the elf is the one to reel back with a sharp intake of breath.

"You are alive," he manages, and Margo is pulled under a tide of déja vu that conjures Redcliffe and Alexius's crapsack future. Her mind flashes to the other Solas's last words, before the monstrosity perforated his lungs. Ar lath ma, vhenan.

Her heart lurches. She squeezes her eyes against the vision, then opens them slowly, and looks around. They are still in the hut — and she is still in his bed. Solas is perched on a nearby chair, his staff laid out at his feet. The air is thick with a combination of ozone and iodine, with a hint of something earthy she can't quite identify. She notices how exhausted he looks — lips pale with dehydration and eye sockets sunken and shadowed with the tell-tale symptoms of magicka drain.

"How long have I been out?" She sounds like a crow with a two-packs-a-day smoking habit.

"How long..." Solas shakes his head, as if to dislodge a mirage. He leans forward and grabs her wrist, palpating for a pulse with icy fingers, then he drops her hand as if scalded. There is a feverish blush across his cheekbones. Margo frowns. Whatever he's been up to while she was out of it, it hasn't done him any favors.

When he finally answers, his voice is oddly distorted, as if he is speaking through strained vocal chords — or around a constriction in his throat. "I stood as motionless as stone, unable to affect events, and watched you trapped within the flow along with others. None could escape. My efforts to retrieve you proved futile. I sought to wake you, but without success." He takes a shuddering breath. "I saw your essence rent to shreds by forces that the Breach unleashed." His eyes are haunted, as if another memory is lining up with this more recent shock in an awful overlay.

Margo tilts to a sitting position and notices the transformation in the elf's posture — a subtle shift towards combat-readiness. She tries to make her voice soothing, because, of course, she has seen that look plenty, even before she arrived in Thedas. Baba's village was far enough to the north to be spared most of the violence, but war casts the longest of shadows. "When you saw that you couldn't get me out, what did you do?"

"I woke and struggled to keep your body breathing." He stares at her with the edge of a challenge, gaze simultaneously angry and bleak. "A pointless task. Whatever has returned could never be the same. What are you and what do you seek?" There is no mistaking the command in his tone.

"Still little old me, I'm afraid," Margo offers rather dryly. "And no, I am not building another magnet in an effort to prove that I am not an abomination. Strict one-magnet-per-week policy."

Some of the tension releases him — exhaustion taking its place — but he doesn't look entirely convinced.

Margo sighs, and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. "You've poked around in my head before. Be my guest — take a look. If you find any foreign objects, I'd love to know."

The muscles in his jaw tighten. There is a cagey look about him, as if he is trying to decide whether the invitation is a trap, but when he speaks, his voice is simply resigned. "May I?" At Margo's nod, Solas leans forward. The procedure is little more than him peering at her with slightly unfocused eyes, his hand passing at the back of her head. Evaluation completed, the elf withdraws back to his chair and lets his face drop into his palms.

"Solas..." In all fairness, if this were her world, some research ethics committee somewhere would have their hides, but it's not like the Breach comes with best practices protocols. And there is something profoundly uncomfortable and not a little confusing about seeing him quite so thrown. The elf lugs around guilt like a snail carries its shell. "You're taking this too hard. We didn't know this would happen. And I'm fine. "

When he finally looks up, his expression is thunderous. "It is a poor excuse. For all my noticing that you share certain qualities with spirits, I foolishly ignored the implications of my own assessment. To think that you would not succumb to the same dangers because you are enfleshed and fully self-aware was unforgivably shortsighted." He hesitates. "The fault is mine. How... How did you survive?"

Margo shrugs. "I relocated to the chicken hut." Which is not, strictly speaking, a lie. "If you could pause the self-flagellation for a moment, I do have some new questions. First question, do we need to worry about Cole?"

Solas's eyebrows draw together, but Margo is pleased to note that he redirects his energy towards the more constructive task of solving a problem, rather than trying to drown himself in self-recrimination. "Cole's situation is unique, as is yours, and though they resemble each other in some respects, they are by no measure identical. I suspect Cole knows how to handle himself around the Breach. But there may be other issues to consider that could affect you both." He hesitates. "We should expect summoning to be a danger."

By the time she manages to process this particular piece of news, Margo finds herself upright and pacing. Great. And here she thought her problems were limited to whether she herself was an abomination. The equally exciting prospect of being summoned to abominate someone else adds a whole new layer of unpleasantness.

On her third oscillation, Solas catches her wrist. Their eyes lock for a few seconds, and then he pulls her into his lap. His hold on her is a little too firm, but Margo decides that she doesn't mind — they both can use the anchoring. "What other questions did you have in mind?"

"The second question has to do with Imshael." Better grab that particular demonic chicken by the tail feathers — Baba has never been one to insist on something without good reason. At Solas's frown, Margo quickly tries to get her thoughts — and words — in order. This is going to be tricky waters. "Imshael is sustained by creating impossible and morally awful choices for mortals, right?'

He nods in confirmation. "Yes. However, no matter what labels he gives himself, he remains a desire demon. He is simply more sophisticated in his approach."

"Can a spirit like him feed on another spirit?"

A strange shadow passes over Solas's face. He keeps silent and still for a long time — too long to leave any doubt as to whether or not he's thought on this before. Time stretches and warps like a Dali clock. When he finally speaks, his voice is modulated towards cautious neutrality. "Not to my knowledge."

It isn't that he's lying, exactly. She can see the truth of his statement. But it is as if there is something else he could have said — something that may or may not be relevant — but which, for some reason, he keeps close to the chest. Margo starts to get up, but Solas's arms tighten around her. "I will... think on this further. You never told me what choice he forced on you during your last confrontation."

Margo pretends to examine the evil abbot painting in order to buy herself a few moments to think. Damn the elf and his carefully worded fishing expeditions. Maybe she can trade her half-truths for his. Quid pro quo, Clarice , and all that. In principle, it would be wise to pool their information on Imshael's modus operandi. But doing so would also open several particularly squiggly cans of worms, including the unresolved problem of Baba — and the rather ominous proclamation about deeds bearing fruit in the Fade. Surely, Baba didn't mean this literally? While all of Earth's rather rich mythology about inexplicable dream-based impregnations makes for some titillating storytelling, it couldn't possibly be more than a way to negotiate the problem of uncertain paternity, right? Because if Fade stuff counts, then the timing could fit with the blasted memory ritual, and would circumvent the problem of Maile's catastrophic abdominal injury and... She swallows. Oh unholy hell, no no no. Under the rug with that one. The nuns can collectively go take a running jump. Unreliable narrators, the lot of them.

"Redcliffe is a conversation I'd rather not have right before my appointment with the spymaster." Margo represses a wince. She sounds entirely too curt to leave any doubt as to whether she is hiding something. This is irrational paranoia. She doesn't need to take responsibility for every single one of Maile's mistakes.

"Of course. We can talk of it this evening when you are not pressed for time."

And there is a strongly worded suggestion if she's ever heard one. Nor is it lost on Margo that Solas's statement presupposes that her relocation to his house is not a one time event. She forces herself to take a deep breath. "Is that an autocratic streak I spy, Solas?"

The elf frowns, visibly taken aback. "I would not... No, fenor. My words were meant as an invitation, not as an assumption of compliance." He shakes his head — a firm denial. "To lay such a proprietary claim on another being would be abhorrent, all the more so if done under the name of care." Whatever he sees in her face, his own expression softens, then turns regretful. "My door is open to you whenever you wish to use it, in whichever direction — although this does not mean that I do not have preferences regarding the outcome. Still, I suspect Redcliffe may be a discussion best held in private, away from prying ears."

"Radical, yet practical. How could anyone resist?"

His smile is ironic — sweet with a bitter finish. "How indeed."

They sit quietly for a moment. At length, Margo allows herself to relax and leans her head on Solas's shoulder. His lips brush a soft kiss on her forehead. The grey light that filters through the blinds suggests that some accursed local rooster will probably be announcing that it is time to earn one's keep. And there she was, wasting time wondering about the connection between poultry and demonic intent — here it is, in plain sight.

"I should gather my stuff, go wash, and track down some tea before I have to brave Torq— Leliana."

"Feel free to take what you need for the day, and leave your other belongings here if you wish. It would be no trouble to ward the door." Margo makes to argue, but he nuzzles her ear, and her protest quickly comes to an inglorious if rather pleasant demise. "I have meant to ask you before: tell me of this Torquemada you keep substituting for our spymaster."

The distraction tactic isn't exactly subtle, but she offers him the abridged version anyway. Solas listens to her summary of the history of the Spanish Inquisition with an amused frown. "And in addition to all that, good old Tomás was a very fashion-conscious fellow, if you can believe it. Introduced a whole line of garments to be worn specifically by heretics, referred to as a ' sanbenito .' Very tasteful. Flames, demons, dragons, ridiculous headwear — it'd fit right in."

A chuckle. "I shall keep this to myself, lest we give the Inquisition's leadership ideas." His expression grows speculative. "Jests aside, it is uncanny how many parallels there are between your world and mine. One must ponder the likelihood of such apparent coincidence. What do you make of it? An accident of convergence?"

Margo sighs quietly. That's the billion-sovereign question, isn't it? "I don't know. Our human cultures seem remarkably similar, but I am not so sure about the other races. The ancient elves would be different by definition, considering the use of magic and their long lifespans, unless that's just later mythologizing."

"You are skeptical of the magic? Or of the possibility of such longevity? Perhaps the latter was simply an extension of the former."

Margo cocks an eyebrow. "It is hard for me to imagine biological immortality in something that isn't a tree or a fungal colony. Something with a high degree of sentience is prone to boredom, so I suspect it might eventually become monstrous without death to keep its appetites in check."

It's subtle, but she could swear Solas flinches, then the skin around his eyes tightens — not a frown yet, but on its way there. "Considering the current state of affairs, a shorter life does not appear to guard against monstrosity." He pauses. "Your people are short-lived?"

"Compared to trees and fungal colonies? Yes."

He reflects on this for a few moments. "It is believed that elven elders, when they became weary of the weight of years, would voluntarily enter uthenera , a state of slumber that allowed their spirit to wander the Fade while their bodies slept in the mortal realm."

"Interesting. What happened to the bodies over time?"

Solas shrugs. "Some were maintained by servants and assistants, or were cared for by kin. Others were left to deteriorate and die eventually. On rare occasions talented mages appeared to be sustained by the Fade itself — or so the legends claim."

"You know, this sounds somewhat similar to the concept of samadhi in one of our major religious traditions, though with one caveat. Can one come back from uthenera? Is it like biological stasis?"

"In theory." His lips quirk. "Though as I have not noticed many ancient elves around, I presume that such an event would be unusual."

Margo grins slyly. "Would we even know? If I were an ancient elf running around contemporary Thedas, I'd not advertise it."

There is a sparkle of wicked amusement in his eyes. "And what would your approach to such a predicament be, I wonder?"

"I'd probably try to hide in plain sight." She shrugs. "Assume an identity — maybe something that would draw on my preexisting skills while offering an explanation for any idiosyncrasies."

His laughter is rich and unusually unguarded. The sound of it sends a tingle all the way down to her toes. "Let us hope that our hypothetical visitor from the past would not have to contend with stepping into another's shoes, as you did. It seems like an entirely unreasonable challenge."

"I'd say the best course of action might be to find work adjacent to a university or other institution of learning and gain access to their library so one could catch up on the couple of millennia one missed. That'd keep me occupied for a bit."

"Yes. Yes, I imagine it would."

For a few uncannily elastic moments, they simply stare at each other, unable to look away, caught in suspension.

The bubble bursts. Her mind returns to the samadhi problem, and Margo worries at her lower lip, suddenly unsettled. "You know what, you're right. The parallelisms are odd. I can maybe stretch the explanation for humans, though it smacks of a teleological view of progress, which I don't particularly care for. But why would there be resonances with ancient elves if they were indeed quite so different?"

"I believe I am becoming familiar with this particular facial expression of yours. What are you thinking?"

Margo shakes her head. "I don't know. But there is a mechanism that connects it all, I am sure of it."

"I have the distinct feeling you intend to find out what it is."

Margo expects her departure to involve some awkward negotiations, but it is the opposite, and that in itself leaves her puzzled, pleasantly surprised, and a little uneasy. Before she sets off, Solas intercepts her and pulls her into an unhurried and rather thorough kiss that somehow manages to come across as sweet, but a bit smug — the nonverbal equivalent of "gotcha," but with more tongue.

She leaves him poring over a tattered tome on the history of the Nevarran court. "Can I borrow it once you're done?" The request is out before Margo realizes she was going to make it — as if book exchange is an old practice between them. "Certainly," the elf nods, a tad distractedly as he looks around, trying to locate what Margo surmises is a lost bookmark, "though if you are interested in writings on necromancy, I recommend Galen Vedas's memoir. It is on the second shelf from the top." He waves his hand at the bookshelf in the corner without lifting his eyes from the pages. The shelves have filled out since last she saw them. Margo decides that the gesture means something like my bookshelf is your bookshelf and sighs in resignation. Hook, line, and sinker, the bastard.

Then again, it beats the Inquisition's color-coded library.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by the sanbenito, a garment introduced during the Spanish Inquisition, and worn by heretics on their way to the pyre. Made of yellow cloth, the tunic reached down to the knees of the wearer, and sported figures of monks, dragons, and demons in the act of stoking flames, signifying that the heretic is impenitent and is condemned to burn at the stake._

 _Next up: Evie, Leliana, complicated conversations._

 _As always thank you for your follows, favs, and for sharing your thoughts._


	66. Chapter 66: The In-Between

_In which Margo takes a bath, and has tea with the Herald._

* * *

Above Haven the skies are grey and laden with snow, though the prospect of an impending blizzard is still a more pleasant sight than the Dark Reticulum of Misery that encases the Dreaming version of the village. The route to the bathhouse is quiet — at this hour, the only inhabitants up and about are the sentries and the elves, most of whom appear to be employed in those largely invisible jobs that ensure the smooth functioning of the camp's social machinery. Margo nods and smiles at a familiar kitchen worker — the same one who had told her, on Margo's first, mind-boggling day in Thedas, that Charter's patrol was gone for two weeks. The woman inclines her head in return and then goes about her business.

Despite the early hour the bathhouse is already heated, and Margo sends a mental thank-you to whomever ensured this. There are no other visitors in sight. She hesitates between the bucket method and an actual bath — although the more accurate term for the container might be "vat" — and decides that she might as well enjoy a proper soak.

The towels and soaps are unattended, and she helps herself, despite the muddled feeling of guilt. She has no money to pay for them — the few coppers she has left should be used on food. While she strips down, Margo deliberates whether she should start a side business of selling potions on the sly — because no one seems to be particularly interested in paying her — or devote herself to the favorite local pastime of looting corpses.

She washes her clothes and sets them out to dry on the heated hearthstones before easing herself into one of the baths. The water is a tad too hot for comfort, milky steam drifting along the surface. Upon closer examination, the vat looks like it was used to brew beer in its previous life. It has been retrofitted with a sitting ledge — unless Theodosian brewing barrels already come equipped with a full-immersion option — and, while the design clearly presupposes a human male body, Margo decides she is not about to complain. As long as she doesn't make waves, the setup works.

She relaxes and closes her eyes. All that's missing is a nice infusion of herbs. It is likely that Theodosians have their own traditions of herbal baths — though such life-affirming concoctions are probably not in Master Adan's repertoire, unless they also happen to explode. Maybe she can tinker around and develop a couple of simple formulas — something with muscle-relaxant properties and maybe a mild antiseptic would probably go over quite well with both the soldiers and the civilians. If she could float the idea of introducing them to the masses — perhaps convince Lady Montilyet that this would be good for morale — then she might even secure herself some logistical support.

Margo sighs quietly. The thoughts are pleasant, mundane, reassuring distractions from the constant necessity of thinking two steps ahead. Torquemada hasn't explicitly ordered her to withhold her status from the other members of the so-called Inner Circle — and the logical question is, why not? As long as her alien origin remains a secret, it can be used as leverage. By Leliana or Bull — for whatever long game each of them plays — or by others. Conversely, if the spymaster takes revealing it upon herself, there will be no way to control the narrative.

The creaking of the door startles her out of her thoughts. Margo jerks to her feet inside the tub, splashing water over the edge. And then she relaxes and grins. "I see you had the same idea of avoiding the crowds!"

"Oh! I didn't think anyone would be in here!" Evie wrinkles her nose and smiles, all dimples and mild embarrassment. "Praise Andraste, it's you. I know we all should be past this sort of thing, but I still find it terribly strange to bathe in front of other people."

Margo nods in silent solidarity. "There is another tub over there — I can turn around while you get in, if you'd like?"

Evie gives her a grateful look. "You wouldn't mind?"

"Of course not."

The sudden memory of the trial — and of being peeled apart in layers by whatever magic Evie unleashed — ices down Margo's spine in a jolt of primordial dread. Her teeth start chattering despite the scalding water, so she turns to face the opposite wall and focuses on unbraiding her hair with much more zeal than the operation demands. It takes a minute or two to get the panic under control. "How are you doing, sweetheart?" she asks, once her voice feels steady.

Behind her, clothes rustle. There is a quiet splash, followed by a muttered "Ow ow ow! Maker, are they trying to cook us?" More splashing. "I am all right, I think. You can turn around now."

Evie's head sticks up above the neighboring tub. Her injured lip is completely healed, but her hair looks as grimy as it did during the trial. Her bangs have grown out to that infuriating length where they are too long to stay out of the way and too short to wear up. The young woman pushes them out of her face with irritated grumbling.

"You'll get used to the temperature, and then you'll never want to get out. Trust me."

"And then I will turn embarrassingly pink and pruny," Evie states grimly. "I suppose there's no helping it now."

"But you will be clean, pink, and pruny."

Evie pours some water onto her head with a pitted old dipper and begins working soap into her hair with obvious relief. "Did you know there are babies in Haven?" she asks suddenly. "There are. Four, to be exact. Or maybe more, but they weren't out to be blessed." At Margo's utterly consternated expression, Evie winces. "I am skipping steps again, aren't I? Varric says I leapfrog over sentences when I talk. What was... Oh! Babies. I found out when a group of women sort of jumped out from behind the tavern on my way here asking to bless — anoint? consecrate? — anyway, recite a piece of the Chant over their little ones. And the livestock, but I promised I would do that at some other time. Hopefully they'll forget — druffalos terrify me, what with the fur, and the horns, and the snorting. It's like they really meant to be bears, but someone somewhere mixed up the prescripts?" She sighs. "I don't think they want a pink and wrinkly Herald to do all that blessing work — the parents, not the druffalos — though, come to think of it, maybe the babies would mind it less, since some of them tend to be pink and wrinkly, too. Maybe they're thinking, 'Aha! Look how pink and wrinkly that one is! Surely, it is one of us. Just exceptionally large.' But then there are the other folk who try to ward against evil when I walk by — as if I can't see the hand motions they're making in their pockets. At least I hope that's what they're doing. Either way, I doubt they'd like to see me pink and wrinkly, either. They'll probably think I'm a proper demon then."

"There's no pleasing some people." Margo somehow manages to keep the chortling to a minimum — full-on laughter would probably drown her.

Evie pauses the lathering process. "I'd be happy with pleasing anyone at all." She suddenly colors. "Oh, Maker, that's not... Why doesn't it sound right? It's because of what I was thinking, isn't it? It's always like that — one moment you're just thinking about blessing livestock, and then the next..." Evie presses her fists to her eyes with a pained growl, followed by another "ow ow ow, soap!" and a dunk under the water. "Oh Andraste's sweet mercy, why is this so complicated?" she asks plaintively upon bobbing up to the surface.

"Honestly, if someone asked me to bless their babies, I would go off on a tangent about livestock, too," Margo states firmly while trying to get the soap out of her own hair. The alkaline pH is quickly turning it into one single sordid clump. She will need to rub oil into it or hack the whole mess off. Maybe the local men have the right idea with their preference for shaved heads. How did Maile maintain this thing? "Are you still having trouble finding the right words?"

Evie, who has managed to regain some of her composure, reflects on the question. "Not in the same way. Before, it was as if there could never be enough words, and when I tried to pick one, it'd run away and hide. And now, there are too many , all crowding for a turn and crying, 'Me, me, pick me!'"

This time, Margo chuckles in earnest — and then decides that she will be safer standing. "You know, the way you describe it, it sounds very similar to the experience of becoming fluent in a new language." With any luck, the change in the young woman's linguistic struggles is a sign that things are on the mend. "It doesn't seem to be a constant problem," Margo ventures after a pause. Evie's speech in the chantry didn't lack in eloquence.

Evie's sigh is so heavy that it offers a live demonstration of Archimedes' principle. Then again, someone really did overfill the tubs. "Sometimes, all my thoughts are orderly and take turns. Most of the time, though, it's a muddle. I hope I am never asked to give a speech. Because that would be a disaster."

"Don't sell yourself short, love. It'll come to you." They sit quietly for a few moments. "Evie, there is something I want to talk to you about. Can I invite myself over for tea?"

"Yes! Yes, of course! I was going to ask you myself, but then I thought you are probably very busy... But I don't have any food. Just oatmeal cakes."

"Oatmeal cakes are food," Margo nods emphatically as her stomach corroborates this classification with a plaintive rumble. She can't remember when her last meal was.

"I mean I don't have any guest food. You know? Food that is not horribly embarrassing to feed to guests? Those cakes are... rather solid."

"Good thing I am not a guest, but your friend, then."

"Oh!" Evie considers this. "That's good. Then you can help me eat them."

Evie still occupies the same modest wooden house, but its interior has been updated since Margo last saw it. It conjures the mental image of a small and very industrious urban squirrel using whatever unlikely materials happened to be at her disposal to build herself a nest.

A series of small wood carvings — mostly various animal figurines — populates one of the shelves. Margo wonders briefly where they're from — they are all executed in the same style, likely by the same artist. The bedside table supports a tower of books: judging by the spines, adventure titles and an impressive collection of what appears to be romances. The one on top is Swords and Shields , by one Varric Tethras. The bed is piled with decorative pillows, quilted from somewhat random scraps of fabric.

They settle at Evie's small table and wait for the tea to boil.

Margo steels herself. "Sweetheart, I have something to tell you, but it will sound... unlikely."

Evie stares at her, guffaws artlessly, and then slams a hand over her mouth, horrified. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm not laughing at you! It's just that... is it going to be more unlikely than whatever has been happening to me?" Suddenly, the amusement vanishes, and the young woman looks crestfallen and terribly tired. Margo feels a sharp pang of guilt over having to add yet another thing for the kid to try to make sense of. But before she can think better of it, Evie gathers herself around a newfound steely core. Her smile is almost painfully abashed. "Oh, that sounded like I'm complaining, didn't it? I just meant that, whatever it is, if you're worried that I won't believe you — don't! Because, you know." She waves her hands in an ominous pantomime. "Suddenly, a necromancer! I don't think it could get much odder than that. At least I hope not. Though I suppose that 'suddenly, a blood mage!' would be worse."

Margo grins and pats Evie's hand. "So is it settled then? You are officially a necromancer?"

Evie mulls this over, nibbling on the edge of her oatmeal cake in a very convincing interpretation of the aforementioned squirrel. As far as texture goes, the cakes put Margo in mind of a hockey puck. "Others seem to think so. I can't seem to do any other magic, so I guess I am a one-trick-mabari."

"Maybe other skills will come in time, too?" Margo hesitates. "I've been meaning to ask you. What is it like? When you do what you do?"

The vertical groove between Evie's brows deepens, and the young woman shakes her head. "I can't very well describe." She presses her palms together, and twists them from side to side. "See, every moment and the next have this tiny little gap between them, like... the space between the pages of a closed book. It's so narrow you can hardly see it at all. But if you squeeze through just right and sort of wiggle around, you can..." Evie shrugs. "Tweak things a bit. Not very far, because the gap is — well, it's almost not there. And some moments are stuck together too tight, as if someone spilled sweet tea on the pages."

Evie gets up and begins fussing with the kettle. Margo doesn't press, letting the young woman ponder her explanation in peace. She accepts the cup handed to her with a grateful nod, but after the silence stretches into uncomfortable territory, Margo ventures a question. "So how does it relate to necromancy? To hear Varric say it, you resurrected Ser Barris by killing Envy. Is that what happened?"

"I don't quite know." Evie stares into space, mixing a lump of rock sugar into her tea long past the point of it dissolving. "I just really really wanted us to win that fight. Because Envy was nasty, and Ser Barris was so very brave, and it was unfair that he'd die and that Envy would win, and I didn't want to disappoint Cole, who had tried so hard to help... I just remember thinking that if I didn't do something, they would all die — Varric, and Warden Blackwall, and all the Templars. And Ca— the Seeker. So I prayed. I asked Andraste to show me the path." Evie extracts her spoon from the cup and sets it down, the gesture slow and deliberate. "Have you ever heard Varric talk about picking locks? He tried to explain it to me once. I want to think it's a bit like that. I just sort of... saw the gap. And pushed into it. And it let me. After that, there was another gap and another, and suddenly, it felt like all the little gaps lined up into a single path, and made a tunnel — and on the other end of it, I could see Ser Barris was alive, and Envy was gone." She shrugs. "I didn't mean to destroy Envy. And I'm making it sound easy. It's not. It's like trying to climb through a keyhole into the one place where everyone is all right."

There is a million questions just begging to be asked. Are "gaps" probability bifurcations, and if so what is their relationship to time? How did this work in the chantry with raising the dead? Can Evie manipulate more than the transfer of beings across the Veil? What powers her magic? Margo tries to discipline the swarm of thoughts, but they just buzz louder. "With the caveat that I know nothing about how this works, what you describe sounds a bit like time magic?"

Evie looks horrified. "Maker's breath, I hope not! I heard about Magister Alexius. I couldn't even begin to imagine what he did..." Her eyes darken with a sudden flare of anger. "Margo, I am so terribly sorry they... they... just left you there," she blurts out. "And that I never even asked whether... I am so sorry! Everything has been such a blur since Therinfal, and my head is a sieve on the best of days."

"It's all right, sweetheart. Don't worry about me." At Evie's crestfallen expression, Margo forces herself to chuckle. It's almost convincing. "Which isn't to say that I would like a repeat of the experience, but all is well that ends well, right?"

"Yes? Except that The Iron Bull is still a colossal asshat? Which sort of makes sense, because where else would he wear one? He already doesn't wear a shirt — what are the chances of a hat? And I don't think a head hat would fit over those horns, except if you cut holes in it, and then it'll just look like a pair of underthings and not a hat at all."

Margo snorts — she has absolutely no trouble imagining Iron Bull wearing knickers on his head — then reaches across the table and squeezes Evie's hand. "He made a tough call. He's not my favorite person right now, but I understand why he did it. Evie, listen, about that..."

"Oh Andraste's shiny crown, I totally forgot! See? Not even a sieve, a colander! You had something to tell me."

Margo nods, but when it is time to launch into it, she feels oddly at a loss for words. When she finally does, her narrative is choppy, but Evie turns out to be an incredible listener — steady, empathic, and not once skeptical or suspicious — and, in the end, Margo finds herself telling much more of her story than she originally intended. After the initial gasp of shocked surprise on Evie's part, it gets easier. And by the time Margo is done summarizing the circumstances of her dislocation and her last month and a half in Thedas, the young woman starts to prod her with seemingly simple questions about her life before. The words tumble out slowly, and then faster and faster, like water breaking through the cracks of an old dam. She tells Evie of her childhood — of Baba, of the little village on the shores of an ancient river, and of her family, pieces of it chipped off by illness, war, and seemingly endless social upheavals. She tells of her studies, of the bizarre caprice of fate that landed her in a PhD program across an ocean. Of her research. She tells her of Jake and how random and unfair it was that her younger brother, the one with all the gifts, would end up tangled up in addiction just because some substances make for the harshest of masters. Margo's voice wobbles through her own guilt over it, because if only she hadn't encouraged him to follow her, then maybe the chips would have fallen differently...

Eventually, the flow of words slows, becomes less frantic, and it is as if a terrible weight has lifted a little, leaving a soft wistfulness in its wake.

By the time her tale comes to an end, they've managed to finish all the tea. All that's left of the oatmeal cakes is a pile of stale crumbs.

"Thank you, sweetheart. I'm so sorry I talked your ear off," Margo says quietly.

Evie takes hold of both of her hands, her grip fierce. Her eyes are suspiciously misty. "No no no, it's me who should be doing the thanking! The only reason you had to tell Leliana and the others is because of me. I... I don't know how I contributed, but if something I did ripped you out of your whole world... Oh Maker...You said you had been... dying? Is this why you were able to — how do I even say it? Relocate? Was it an illness?"

Margo sniffs — her eyes are prickling too — and shakes her head. "No, hon." At Evie's furrowed brow, she sighs. And then she tells her. Not in detail — just the basic facts.

Evie remains silent for long moment. When she finally speaks, her voice is shaking with anger. "Do you think there is a world out there that isn't so..." she fishes for a word, but nothing bites.

"Full of asshats?" Margo suggests helpfully.

"Yes."

"One hopes." It is odd how easily the kid has taken all these revelations in stride. "You don't seem all that surprised," Margo comments cautiously. "Did you suspect that I wasn't who I said I was?"

"Oh, no, not even a little. I'm really glad you told me, because I don't think I would have guessed on my own. Not that it makes a difference at all. You are my friend. Whether that means it's Margo, or Maile — or if you want to go by Aveline tomorrow... Come to think of it, I think Aveline would be confusing, because of Varric's writings. Have you read his books? Cassandra has! But never mind that... I knew there must be more worlds than this one." Her face suddenly brightens. "Wait, what if I can reverse it? What if there's a way to send you back?"

Margo forces herself to breathe through her suddenly spiking heart rate. "What do you mean about knowing of other worlds?"

Evie's eyebrows draw together in concentration. "Well...The Chantry teaches us that the Maker, angry at the magisters' arrogance, left the Golden City. But where did he go? I don't think He has a summer residence somewhere in the Void where He can just stay when He's in a strop." She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Which means that there must be other places for Him to go to and make a mess of, doesn't it?"

Before Margo gets a chance to consider Evie's rather Manichean line of questions, they are both startled by the sound of the bells and the muffled rise and fall of the morning prayer, announcing the equidistant point between sunup and noontide.

"Void in a sack," Margo hisses. "How did it get so late?"

Torquemada is going to kill her.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Evie's rather unorthodox theism. Because there is something delightful about writing an adorably cute heretic (at least by local standards)._

 _As always, thank you all for follows/favs/reviews. They are the wind under my sails._

 _Next up: Torquemada and some new information about the Hero of Ferelden_


	67. Chapter 67: A Procession of Shadows

_In which Leliana drinks some tea, we learn about the Hero of Ferelden, and Margo is one step behind._

* * *

"Mistress Duvalle, how lovely of you to be so punctual. Do take a seat. Tea?"

"Thank you, spymaster. I am fine." Margo lowers herself onto a crate covered with the skin of a shaggy-haired beast. Leliana takes a seat opposite her on a similar perch. The tent protects them from the wind but not the frost, though the redhead appears unaffected. She pours the tea into a delicate little cup with a convincing rendition of a Mona Lisa smile. "Are you quite certain? I promise it isn't poisoned. Or have you already had your morning tea elsewhere?"

Margo offers a courteous smile in return. "I did, though I do appreciate your offer."

"Of course." Comrade Nightingale adds not two, not three, but four lumps of sugar, mixes them in, and takes a dainty little sip before setting the cup on a pile of maps spread over the crude trestle desk. Margo eyes the resulting liquid and considers the possibility that the spypaster is an insect in a human suit. "As promised, I have your predecessor's file, as well as some preliminary notes on your new identity. The latter will be a work in progress, and you will consult with me regularly as we develop it such that it best suits the Inquisition's needs." She produces an ornate metal tube from the folds of her cloak. "Everything is here. It is, as you can imagine, a copy. I strongly urge you to dispose of it after reading, but do take care to absorb the details."

Margo takes the tube, and tucks it into the inside pocket of her coat. "Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time." Politeness seems as good an armor as any. Still. Why is it that every interaction with Torquemada she's ever had inevitably mutates into a power game? "Will there be anything else, spymaster?"

"Why, yes. I thought you would like to know that I have taken it upon myself to inform some of our other allies about your status." Torquemada smiles pleasantly, but her gaze remains flinty.

Margo's stomach drops into her heels. She manages an "I see" and then remains silent, unable to marshal the right words. A bleak thought flashes across the horizon of her awareness — she is too slow, too methodical of a thinker to play The Game with any success. Trying to outpace the spymaster is a doomed enterprise. Her only shot is to bog her down. "If I may ask, why the rush?" she finally asks.

Leliana's chuckle is quiet and a little dark — and miles away from the tinkling laughter of her bardic persona. "I thought I would save you the effort, though I fear you may need to smooth over some ruffled feathers. Varric and Blackwall took it in stride well enough. I dare say Varric was suspiciously unsurprised. Sera, on the other hand, did not handle it well. But you are fast to make friends, yes? I was rushed and thus perhaps not as diplomatic as I could have been, but I had originally assumed you might be rather busy this morning. Clearly, I was right to make haste. A bath and a chat with Lady Trevelyan. How very sedulous of you." Torquemada takes another sip of tea. "I trust your conversation was productive? And, on the topic of productiveness, how do you find your new accommodations?"

Margo manages not to swear, but it's a close call. "Perfectly adequate, thank you."

This time, Leliana's laughter is full-throated and worryingly genuine. "Ah, Mistress Duvalle, it is a good thing we are not in Orlais, yes? I have seen scorned lovers hire a blade for much less damning praise."

"Solas and I are not lovers, if that is what you are implying." Margo isn't sure that's strictly speaking true, but the devil is in the details. The spymaster looks vaguely amused. So. Solas was right, and Clemence was not an oversight. "I... see. So you expected..." Margo trails off, unsure of how to complete the sentence.

Leliana's smile is so prim and proper Margo decides that it must be some particularly refined form of sarcasm. "Well, not expected . One never expects such things, yes? Curious how they always come as a surprise, especially to their immediate participants. No, agent, I speculated, perhaps, that this may be one of the outcomes. Our resident apostate is a cautious man in many respects, yet he has been a rather steadfast ally to you, even at some risk to himself, has he not? Besides, the looks you two exchange are not entirely discreet."

Margo shakes her head, because, abruptly, she is all out of reasonable questions. And patience. "Why? What do you gain from all this... puppeteering?"

Torquemada's expression darkens. She leans in, pinning Margo with her pale gaze. There is new frost in her voice when she finally responds. "Do you know what the main difference is between us, Mistress Duvalle?"

Margo's heart thumps painfully. One of us is not a cold-hearted bitch? Rationally, she knows this to be a performance, as carefully crafted as Torquemada's charming, tinkling laughter. The spymaster is a consummate actress — which means she can amp up the fear factor whenever she feels that the occasion warrants it. It doesn't make it any less terrifying. Or infuriating. "You like high-heeled shoes?" Because when on the verge of blurting out something that will likely get you killed, go with the non sequitur.

There is a brief flash of surprise that cuts through Comrade Nightingale's ominous affect. "In a past life, perhaps. Alas, I can no longer afford such frivolities." For a few moments, the spymaster is lost in thought. When she resumes, her tone is softer — more exhaustion than threat. "No, what distinguishes us is our loyalty. You see, my dedication is first and foremost to the Divine and her memory — and thus to the Inquisition. To building something that can outlast the rising tide and stave off the darkness before it engulfs us all. I cannot afford lofty ideals or sentimentality any more than a general considering a battlefield can afford to fret over an individual's soldier life story, no matter how unique or compelling. Our opponents certainly shall not." Leliana pauses, her expression expectant — whether of a rebuttal or a denial, Margo is unsure. When none is forthcoming, the spymaster continues. "Wherever you originate, you have some competencies and knowledge that will be useful to us — or, worse, could benefit our enemies. However, you are not the kind of person who is loyal to abstract principles or institutions. You have little respect for the chain of command, and I suspect that, were you to consider an order unjust, you would disobey it — quietly, without fanfare, but disobey you would. No, Mistress Duvalle, you may be from the other side of the Void itself, and yet I know your type quite well. I do not judge. I was much like you, long ago, but life has a way of delivering harsh lessons. You asked me what benefit I derive from attending carefully to each chess piece, yes? Personally, none at all. But I believe it is in the Inquisition's interest to retain you. The question is simply which levers should be used to do so."

With the tirade out the way, Leliana takes another sip of her tea. Margo tells herself very reasonably that dumping the contents of the teapot over the spymaster's head in an effort to shock her out of her implacable cynicism isn't likely to produce the desired results. "A very practical approach," she finally manages. "Still, isn't playing matchmaker somewhat beneath you?" She succeeds in keeping the anger out of her voice. The question sounds merely curious — and thus exactly as insulting as intended.

Torquemada's eyes narrow. "In my position, one does not have the luxury of getting picky over methods." The flash of anger dissipates. "Your friendship with the Herald is an asset in many ways, but it is insufficient to guarantee your compliance. It gives me leverage over her, but not over you. You understand why, yes?"

Margo chuckles humorlessly. "Because after what happened in the chantry, Evie is untouchable. For the people, she is the Herald of Andraste, whether you like it or not. She is beyond your ability to use as bait — you need someone disposable for that."

"Indeed." Leliana leans back against a supporting beam and cocks her head to the side, evaluating. "Make no mistake, Mistress Duvalle, our world is a pitiless place — for elves especially. Were this Orlais, you might have found yourself in the bed of a strategically useful noble, bound there with a weave of lies and blackmail so tight you would not so much as blink without consulting your superiors. How fortunate, then, that this is still Ferelden, and not the Orlesian court, yes? Everything is much simpler." She pauses. "Are you quite certain you wouldn't like some tea now? No? Where was I? Ah yes. Alliances. Cassandra and I routinely disagree on this matter. She wishes to see the principled logic behind people's loyalty. I, on the other hand, find that emotions make for more potent ties than rational self-interest or abstract ideals. I have never understood those military commanders who would discourage intimacy among the soldiers in their charge. To die for the glory of a faraway ruler, or to die so that the lover fighting at one's side might draw another breath — such things are hardly comparable. With all of this in mind, wouldn't you say that a little nudge in the right direction serves all of our needs?" Leliana's smile is her most charming yet.

It takes Margo a long time to formulate a response. "I do appreciate your candor, spymaster," she finally says.

A flash of something vaguely reminiscent of respect, if one really squints — and then Leliana nods once. "You are intelligent, and you have the benefit of being a quick learner. I would like to think that under different circumstances, you and I could have been friends. A modicum of honesty is the best I can offer you, but it is more than you will receive elsewhere. I wish it were otherwise — that we could treat each other beyond the framework of utility — but you must fully understand the implications of your... transplantation. It is better that way." Torquemada pauses. "I admit that I am curious — you mentioned your own world had only humans, no other races. What a peaceful, congenial place it must be!"

Margo snorts. "I am afraid that we would give you all a run for your money. One of my world's influential thinkers called it 'the narcissism of small differences.'"

For a brief instant, Leliana's lips quirk in something close to a smile — perhaps in appreciation of the novel phrase, or perhaps in enjoyment of its irony. She drums her fingers on the map, right over the area where Orlais and Ferelden share a border.

"You will find no shortage of strife between the humans here as well, agent."

"That brings me to a question, if you wouldn't mind. Are there any circumstances under which the Qunari and Tevinter might ally? Or, let's say, the Dwarven kingdoms — if that is the term — and the Dalish?"

Leliana's expression grows distant and thoughtful. "The Blight," she finally offers.

Margo nods, unsurprised. This part of the picture, at least, has been crystallizing unchallenged. "A particularly jaded, functionalist interpretation would suggest that Blights are the only thing that keeps you all from annihilating each other. I do have another question — since we are speaking honestly." Shit shit shit. What has gotten into her? This is suicidal. But if she doesn't take a stand now, Torquemada will default back to pushing her around the board like a pawn. "What happened in Haven? It was reconstructed somewhat recently, was it not? Was it destroyed?"

Leliana's face shutters. "Haven was a secluded mountain village, abandoned for a number of years before the Chantry chose to restore it. Why do you ask?"

"A historian's interest, I suppose. Did the Chantry know about the blood magic?"

All the color drains from Leliana's face. The two women stare at each other for a few moments in deathly silence.

"You knew," Margo concludes quietly. "I am not judging. I think the ward protected the village from demons and new rifts, in its own way. Are you aware it has been damaged?"

"How— Who told you this?" Torquemada grits out.

"No one told me. The fact that the village is reconstructed is fairly obvious if you know where to look. As to the ward, I had a dream of Haven, and I saw it."

Time stutters. Leliana appears to hesitate at a crossroads — and Margo is absolutely certain that one of the paths the spymaster is contemplating will result in a blade to the carotid and a quick but messy death. She doesn't think she will have the skill to parry or outrun the bard if an attack comes, so she simply raises her head and stares at the other woman point-blank, waiting.

Comrade Nightingale opts for the other path. Her shoulders slump under some invisible burden, and she huddles around her tea cup, every bit the grumpy crow. "You would not credit a mere dream if you did not have external confirmation. I had wondered whether Solas knew but chose not to mention it." She looks at her gauntleted hands for a long moment, as if seeing them for the first time, eyes emptied of everything but the memories that gnaw on her bones. "Are you certain it is damaged?" she asks finally, her voice bleak.

Margo confirms with a nod.

"Oh, Maker... Then it was all in vain in the end." The spymaster's eyes dart to Margo. "You are a scholar of history, Mistress Duvalle. Have you heard much about the Hero of Ferelden?"

"Not much beyond the basic association with stopping the Blight, though to be honest with you I am not sure I quite understand what that is."

"Pray that you never do beyond what is on offer in history tomes and bards' songs. The Hero was... a dear friend of mine, a complicated and very troubled man in many ways. He was a Circle mage before joining the Wardens, though I never learned whether he was from a Dalish clan or an alienage — he was brought in so young. The mage tower was all he knew."

"Was he the one to create the ward?" Margo asks through numb lips.

"He... did what he thought was necessary." Leliana's gaze drifts inward, drawn by a memory that leaves a sorrowful imprint on her face. When she speaks, her voice is soft and wistful. "I spent the Blight years fighting at his side. Alim was the gentlest of souls, a healer before he was anything else. A poet who saw beauty in the most mundane of worldly textures. Which is why the callousness — the apparent cruelty — behind some of his choices was impossible to reconcile. When he explained why he did what he did, I do not think I believed him. On bad days, I thought him mad. It is only now that I am beginning to see that he spoke the truth — impossible as it seems. And now, there is no one left to ask." Leliana shakes off the torpor with a visible effort. Her gaze turns shrewd and calculating. "Bygones. You will not speak of this to anyone else, you understand?"

"Can I ask what the ward was for?" The other part of the question hangs in the air, unarticulated, an absent presence. If Solas spoke the truth about what powered the magic, what could possibly justify such mass slaughter?

Leliana doesn't answer for a long time. Finally, she makes a vague gesture with her hand. "This. The Breach. The Inquisition. A fighting chance in a future no less catastrophic than the Blight — and one that only Alim could see. And perhaps the witch, though I am uncertain," she adds quietly, as if to herself. "A future he knew he would not be a part of. Maker, what a lonely path to walk." She shakes her head, trying to chase away the swarm of memories, and casually wipes at her cheek with the heel of her gloved hand. "Enough reminiscing. I should thank you for informing me about the damage." There is the barest hint of tremor in her voice.

"If it matters, most of the ward is still intact. The hole is confined to the area above the chantry."

Leliana nods. "We shall take precautionary measures, then. In any case, now that the question of your accommodations has been solved, there is the matter of your salary, which you have not been collecting. Report to Josephine, and then go see Commander Cullen. With the Tranquil alchemist assisting Adan, you are of more use to us in the field. We are gathering a team to accompany the Herald on a short experimental expedition before we tackle the Breach. I do not share Cullen's confidence in the Templars' abilities to suppress the magic of the Fade — so we shall test their skills on a rift first. There may be some opportunities to grow the Inquisition's influence at the same time. Cullen mentioned that he would like a support contingent. Oh, and don't forget to familiarize yourself with your new identity." Torquemada stands and, after a brief moment of hesitation, shocks Margo by extending her hand for a handshake. "Good day, agent. I am certain we shall speak again after your return."

Margo manages "pleasantly polite" like the best of them and shakes the offered hand. "I look forward to it." And, what do you know, it's only mostly a lie.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by questionable choices made in DA Origins._


	68. Chapter 68: People of the Book

_In which Margo chats with Josephine, and Bull makes amends (after a fashion)_

* * *

Josephine's office smells of parchment, beeswax, and a delicious, bittersweet, nutty aroma, like chicory and cinnamon. Since the door is wide open Margo knocks on the wooden frame. The ambassador is alone — Minaeve is nowhere in sight, and the makeshift laboratory is missing about half of its glassware. Margo speculates that the enchanter might be in the process of moving into a more research-friendly location — there is no way that Josephine appreciates conducting her ambassadorial dealings with Minaeve digging around in putrid creaturely remains in the background any more than Minaeve appreciates listening to fussy Orlesian nobles prattle on.

"May I come in?" Margo asks.

Josephine looks up from her writing. "Mistress Duvalle, of course! Please, make yourself at home!" The smile she gives Margo is sunny and warm and the kind of artlessly genuine that only comes with years of rigorous training. "I am so pleased you have stopped by — I have to write a letter to some of our supporters in Starkhaven, and I am embarrassed to admit that I would very much enjoy a temporary distraction from that task." Josephine purses her lips, equal parts admission of distaste and charming self-deprecation. Damn, but she is good.

Margo returns the smile and takes the seat offered to her. "I hope I am not interrupting too much."

"Oh, not at all! I hoped we might have the opportunity to talk."

Josephine flits about the room like a colorful hummingbird, and before Margo gets a chance to politely decline further rituals of hospitality she is equipped with a steaming mug of whatever was the source of the chicory-cinnamon smell and a small plate of sweets that are a dead ringer for rahat lokum , except more floral. "This is, in fact, a Rivaini specialty," Josephine explains, "though we in Antiva are of course quick to claim it as our own."

It takes Lady Montilyet all of five minutes to chip away at Margo's initial wall of pleasantly polite wariness, and even if the vague thought that this is what the ambassador does for a living makes an uncertain appearance at the threshold of her consciousness, Margo opts to simply enjoy a conversation where she doesn't have to carefully monitor every step. The sweet almost-coffee drink and the Turkish delight candies melt the rest of her defenses.

Apparently, it really doesn't take much.

Josephine broaches the topic of her salary, and, at Margo's curious question about how they prioritize resource allocation, the ambassador offers an explanation of the Inquisition's budgeting structure. That gets them into a discussion of guilds. Josephine's eyes flash with surprised pleasure at the unexpectedly sympathetic audience, and Margo has to suppress the temptation to badger the poor ambassador with overly enthusiastic questions, since the topic of early modern mercantilism is quite close to her own past academic interests.

As it turns out, the Inquisition's finances are run on an Antivan guild model, implemented by Lady Montilyet to circumvent what she diplomatically calls "the somewhat more predetermined social hierarchies of our southern neighbors." Margo quickly decodes this as the practice of ghettoizing and exploiting the proletariat, elven or otherwise.

"So, in Antiva, membership in guilds is open to everyone? Or is there a lineage system in play?" she asks.

"There are lineages of craftsmen, of course, but skill and raw talent do open many doors, irrespective of origins." Josephine smiles a bit evasively. "Of course, the system is not devoid of nepotism and other inefficiencies, but this is where the Inquisition can be different. Leliana and Cassandra can tell you about our organization's long and not always illustrious history, but I prefer to treat it as a new opportunity to correct some of the shortcomings of the present." There is a distinctly reformist twinkle in Josephine's hazel eyes. Margo wonders whether that little spark will eventually take Josie — and the Inquisition — from guilds to labor unions, skipping a couple of stages on the way. Maybe there will be opportunities to seed some ideas.

The experience of finding her name penned in the ambassador's precise, elegant script in one of the Inquisition's large ledgers is thoroughly uncanny. Her status has been updated from scout to craftsman. M. Duvalle. Field Alchemist, Apprentice. Margo reflects on her new existence as a bureaucratic object — at the same time as her identity is meant to be retrofitted to accord with the Inquisition's needs. She nods a bit distractedly at Josephine's apologies over the lower hazard pay that accompanies her new rank. The full coin purse in her lap is more money than Margo has seen in the last six weeks combined.

Her attention falls on the ledger again. Directly above her name, another entry is written in the exact same shade of ink. It reads Hludwiga. Field Medic, Master.

Noticing her gaze, the ambassador smiles. "I believe you have met my friend Lud, though I wish you had encountered her under more pleasant circumstances."

Margo's eyes widen. "Wait a second, your prison warden is a field medic ?"

There is something a little sly about Josephine's expression. "Why, yes. Though she is no longer in that position — her talents are best utilized elsewhere. In fact, you will be working quite closely with her, as well as a number of others. Which brings me to the matter at hand, Mistress Duvalle. Following the events of the last few days, we thought it wise to implement a... new approach to how we present ourselves."

Margo notes the dark circles under Josie's eyes for the first time — they are mostly powdered over, but still visible in the flickering light of the candelabra.

"So this is a new development?" Margo asks tactfully. The advisors must have stayed awake the previous night, devising a response to Evie's transformation. As it appears, she isn't the only one who's had an eventful night.

"To a degree, though the idea has been germinating for a time. It is crucial that we not be seen as an unmoored and stateless military force, lest we invite destruction."

Margo nods. This sort of politics, she understands. "Right. You're already claiming immunity from political borders because the rifts affect everyone. If the Inquisition grows bigger, it will eventually be perceived as a threat."

Josephine's expression takes a turn for the solemn. "Precisely. These past weeks prove that we are garnering enemies faster than we are supporters. Lady Trevelyan's... peculiar gifts and persona give us a possible advantage, if used wisely. We must provide succor to the people in their time of need — it is the right thing to do, and within our capacity even now — but we must be better at being seen doing it."

Margo eyes the ambassador speculatively. In other words, the Inquisition is in the process of sprouting a humanitarian arm and is fully prepared to brandish Evie like a heretical yet adorable rift-closing scepter that, conveniently, also happens to bypass national sovereignty. Margo stuffs her grudgingly impressed yet thoroughly horrified reaction under the inevitable rug.

"The spymaster mentioned an experimental expedition that might further the Inquisition's influence."

"You are correct. Hopefully a short stint that will assuage Leliana's concerns about the templars' ability to assist Lady Trevelyan in closing the Breach. But I thought we might kill two birds with one stone, as it were." Josephine tops off Margo's not-quite-coffee from an exquisite silver-plated carafe. "I hope that you do not mind my advocating that we place you on the support team. It is a position that should best take advantage of your talents — it occurs to me that in addition to your alchemical expertise, you might be uniquely suited to documenting... local histories."

Margo stifles a surprised laugh. "It seems to me that you have an inordinate amount of spies already."

Josephine's smile is cryptic. "We have agents adept at overhearing deleterious gossip and rooting out enemy elements, often through less than savory methods. What we need is... a lighter touch. A branch of the organization to echo the gentleness of our Lady Herald. To ensure that settlements are not only safe, but have adequate supplies of medicines and food to weather these difficult times. But aid without foreknowledge often does more harm than good. And to this end we must collect people's stories, political and religious attitudes, and small everyday concerns."

People to be heard attending to such seemingly banal matters, alongside with the Inquisition being seen as helping. Of course, Lady Montilyet is too tactful to voice that part out loud. Still, the writing is on the wall — in flashing pink neon letters.

"And perhaps sift through all that gathered information and synthesize it into a picture that would help further the Inquisition's goals?" Margo asks a little slyly — though without malice. Josephine is nothing if not crafty, but Margo can't find it in herself to begrudge it to her — she is so damn charming about it. Margo's eyes dart to the table, where a fresh bouquet of crystal grace rests in a gorgeous porcelain vase.

Poor dear Bear is in over his head.

Josephine pretends not to notice Margo's glance at the vase. "An outsider's perspective in such matters would be invaluable."

Margo shakes her head, not quite managing to repress the mildly demented cackle that threatens to break through. Hadn't she wanted to try her hand at ethnography? Well, there we go. Wish granted. All ethnographers might not be spies, but all good spies are ethnographers. Though, to be fair, among the plethora of readily available shitty options, this one at least is a role she can envision herself occupying. Beats being slotted into the assassin end of the spectrum, and it might get her some new information on local herbalist traditions.

Instead of all that, she compliments Josie's impressive selection of books — the tomes are mostly on politics, economics, history, and a bit on religion, from what she can discern of the spines. Lady Montilyet absolutely beams at the compliment — and there is no doubt that the delight is genuine. Margo has a suspicion that the scholarly facet of the ambassador's personality is too often taken for granted.

"Who are we going to 'offer succor' to, Ambassador? Anything I should learn beforehand?" The gambit to get her paws on Josie's books isn't exactly subtle, but those who risk nothing get nothing.

Josephine's lips purse in thought, and then, as if reading Margo's mind, she extracts a leather-bound tome from the bottom shelf. "I am sure you are already familiar with Brother Genitivi, yes? This is somewhat different, but still quite informative. Not necessarily something to emulate in style — the good sister had rather strong religious commitments — but the attention to detail is a delight." The ambassador pauses, a shallow frown creasing her brow — whether in puzzlement or unease, Margo isn't sure. "Our reports suggest that the Herald will be visiting a cult, if you will pardon me the expression. Despite the Chantry's dominance in most of Thedas, we have no shortage of religious practices, some of them quite colorful. It is not entirely surprising that the rifts would cause a theological response, but worshipping them seems a little... unexpected. It behooves us to verify these rumors."

Margo reads the inscription on the book's spine. "Before Andrastianism: The Forgotten Faiths." By one Sister Rondwyn of Tantervale.

The ambassador's smile turns a little conniving. "In fact, once you are done with your reading, perhaps we could discuss it? I must admit I dearly miss the book salons of Val Royeaux, and while I would not presume to encroach on your time, I have many questions about your world..."

It is Margo's turn to beam. "I would be thrilled." And she would be. Even if she has no doubt whatsoever that this is simply a more palatable way for Josephine to extract information out of her.

Before Margo takes her leave, Josephine glances at her left boot — the one that's developing a rather conspicuous yawn — and hands her a writ for Quartermaster Threnn. "A set of armor to better reflect your new position," she offers mildly.

Margo nods her thanks and takes a look at the piece of parchment.

It is by far the prettiest voucher she has ever seen.

They part ways quite pleased with each other.

###

Quartermaster Threnn, with an expression of equal-opportunity disapproval, trades the voucher for a parcel wrapped so tightly into a stretch of colorless, scratchy wool that it could double as a trebuchet projectile. Inside the fabric — which, with some suspension of disbelief, might pass for a blanket — Margo finds a pair of boots, one set of what she decides are "field clothes," one set of "civilian clothes," and two new sets of rudimentary but clean "intimate apparel." All of it exceedingly practical and with very little consideration for aesthetics. The unexpected boon is enough to make Margo want to jump for joy. She grins instead.

Threnn scowls at this display of idiotic glee and points her thumb towards the back of the tent. "Go try. I don't want complaints three days from now about how something chafes."

The new armor turns out to be a good fit — and it's clean, to boot. It's also delightfully practical — sturdy, warm, comfortable, with a wealth of pockets and a utility belt outfitted with some kind of metal contraption, likely to carry scrolls or writing implements. It comes with a large scarf that can double as a hood, all of it in perfectly reasonable shades of grey and burgundy. Margo notes the green sigiled armband that adorns her right arm. The insignia depicts the bastard child of an Evil Eye charm and an octopus — mercifully slain, if the sword still sticking through it is any indication.

"That's the Inquisition's symbol," Threnn offers gruffly. "The green's to show you're an alchemist." It doesn't explain what the Impaled Octopus of Sauron is meant to symbolize, but Margo decides that Threnn might not be the best person to ask anyway. She stuffs her garb into her pack, and heads towards the training grounds in search of Commander Rutherford.

She spots the former templar some thirty yards away amidst the tents. He is deep in conversation with a shorter man in a remarkably pointy helmet. She slows, trying to decide whether to wait or interrupt.

"Hey, Blondie."

Margo starts. How she's managed not to notice the seven-foot-something Qunari sneak up on her is a mystery for the ages.

"Iron Bull," she nods. She aims her voice for neutrally polite but misses. "What can I do for you?"

"Got a minute?"

She turns to look at him then. The Qunari is planted there in a wide-legged stance, arms crossed over his chest — an incongruous mythological vision of what a teenage boy might have imagined while doodling a fantasy warrior from an invading horde. She has the sudden uncomfortable realization that this is likely closer to the real Iron Bull and that the relaxed, casual, soldierly chumminess is a carefully crafted mask. He looms, equal parts Attila the Hun and Minotaur, grey and unmovable like a slab of granite.

"What's that look for, Blondie?"

Margo shrugs. "Nothing. You remind me of a countertop I once knew."

That earns her a cocked eyebrow, and, for a second, amused confusion cracks the facade of militarized efficiency — too briefly to glimpse what's really beneath it all, but long enough to identify that this, too, is a mask. So he's aiming to make a certain impression. Good to know.

"What do you need?" she asks.

The Qunari considers her with an unreadable expression, then he makes a vague gesture, apparently inviting her to follow him towards his tent. Margo stuffs her hands into her pockets in what she hopes is a convincing rendition of the proverbial unmovable object. When he realizes that she isn't following, Bull turns around.

Their interaction is drawing some attention from the Chargers. The one called Stitches is packing stuff into crates next to the forge, assisted by Blackwall and one of Master Harritt's apprentices. He casts them an uninterested glance but then returns to his task.

"You coming?"

"Nope." She narrows her eyes, thinking. The intimidating affect is clearly meant to shift the power dynamic to the Qunari's benefit — and this, in itself, is remarkably telling. He outweighs her by two hundred pounds at least. If he really wanted to relocate her somewhere else, he could simply pick her up and carry her off, and there wouldn't be much she could do about it. Not to mention the difference in their social positions — so the idea that he would feel the need to casually assert his authority indicates that, for whatever reason, he is feeling uncertain.

Whatever of her thoughts percolates to her face, Iron Bull seems to read them easily enough. He takes a half-step towards her.

Margo stands her ground. "What do you want, Bull?" she asks again.

"You know I don't bite, Blondie. Not unless you ask." There is a lazy smirk on his lips, but it doesn't make it all the way to his eyes.

"Quit it," Margo grinds out with sudden, icy fury. Bull looks momentarily caught off guard — though probably not as much as she is. "I won't dance this dance with you, Bull," she adds after a heartbeat. "If you want to use sexual innuendo as a weapon, I suggest you find yourself a receptive Chantry sister. At a minimum, do not insult my intelligence." She takes a deep breath. "And I would recommend you don't do it with Dorian, either. Those who play with fire are likely to end up with missing eyebrows. Also, he deserves better."

She expects belligerence. Or a deflection — for the Qunari to try to gloss over her anger with humor. What she doesn't expect is the satisfied nod.

"Acknowledged," he says simply. "It was the fastest way to make sure.

He is waiting for the logical follow-up question, so, instead of obliging, Margo shrugs and half-turns towards the training grounds, still keeping the Qunari within her line of sight. "Will that be all?" she asks.

"No." Bull rocks slightly on his feet, then assumes once again his militarized stance. "I want to clear the air."

"You have a funny way of doing it."

"Most words are cheap, Blondie." He pauses, expectant, but Margo decides to leave the uncomfortable silence to accrue dividends. When it's clear that she won't fire anything back, he continues. "You're not antaam — not military. Still, in Redcliffe, you got that my decision was asit tal-eb given what I knew, but you didn't make it difficult, even if it wasn't fair. If you'd been born under the Qun, you would've been ashkaari , one who seeks precise understanding."

Margo waits for an explanation of the terms, but none is forthcoming. She commits them to memory instead, for later reference — but says nothing.

"Got you something," the Qunari adds after a pause.

She stares at him, momentarily stunned.

"Wait here." He pivots on his heels, and departs towards his tent. Margo deliberates whether to simply walk away, but curiosity wins over. Rooted in place by indecision, she is forced to contemplate the unpleasant realization that she truly does feel betrayed by this being whom she had begun to consider, if not a friend, then at least a comrade of sorts. Until this confrontation, that particular unsightly emotional brew had been simmering quietly, out of the limelight of her full awareness.

Bull returns with a long, narrow book and hands it to her in an odd ceremonial gesture, left hand supporting his right forearm, broad palm open beneath the tome's binding. His horns dip in a shallow bow. Margo speculates that the ritualistic exchange is meant to signify respect via disarmament — both hands are visible, and thus conceal no weapon.

A peace offering.

She tries to read him. His face remains stony, but there is a slight hunch to his shoulders, a hidden rigidity in the lines of his neck. A moment of hesitation, and then she emulates his gesture as she accepts the tome. Bull's expression turns from tense to approving.

The book is a well-produced xylograph, printed on cloth instead of paper and bound between two thin wooden panels. The front tablet sports a rhomboid burn pattern of interconnecting charred lines vaguely reminiscent of a stylized fir tree.

"What is it, Bull?" she asks.

"A copy of the Soul Canto," he offers, his voice deceptively casual. "A pretty good one, too. You've asked about the Qunari before. Figured you'd prefer to go to the source."

"Hoping to convert me?" she asks dryly. Everyone is plying her with books these days — apparently, she really is that transparent.

"That's not my role." A pause. "Dorian and Solas should have told me. I would've found a workaround."

"What's the probability I'd still be alive if they had?"

Bull's smirk has a trenchant, relentless edge, like the curve of an old, battleworn scimitar. "It's always one out of two, Blondie. Either you would be, or you wouldn't."

Margo's eyes widen as the sudden realization hits her. "Wait a second, Bull, this isn't just a copy, that's your copy, isn't it?" She almost drops the book in shock. "Look, apology accepted, but I can't take that."

He shrugs and evades her gaze, all traces of the feral grin gone. When he speaks, his tone is flat, matter-of-fact. "Nah. Have it. Don't have much use for that one. It was a... friend's." He pauses, contemplating his next words. "Lots of guys in Seheron get asala-taar . Soul sickness, from seeing too much shit. Can't say whether reading this helped, but I had it when it happened to me." He points his chin towards the training grounds. "Better talk to Cullen and get packing. I hear we're leaving before sunset. Be seeing ya on the road."

He walks off without waiting for a response.

* * *

 _As always, thank you for your favs, follows, reviews, and reading eyes. I apologize for the slow updates - life is terribly busy ATM. If I owe you a response to a review, please bear with me. I read everything and treasure every comment, but I'm just frazzled._

 _Next up: Alchemists Sans Frontières_


	69. Chapter 69: Homo Homini Lupus

_In which Margo has to think on her feet, receives a present, learns a game, and worry comes from unexpected quarters._

* * *

"No, no, no." Even from across the courtyard, Margo can sense the roiling cloud of ambient anger and hangover fumes that surrounds the resident senior alchemist. He is planted in front of the apothecary, doing his best to loom menacingly over a familiar dwarven woman who does not seem the least bit impressed with this display of temper. "I am not about to waste precious time and limited supplies on customizing potions when we don't even know who we're treating. Standard-issue restoratives will have to do."

The dwarf, whom Margo recognizes as Lud by the blocky tattoos and no-nonsense manner, crosses her arms over her chest and graces Adan with a truly magnificent scowl.

When Cullen redirected Margo to "assist Adan with preparations," she had noted the templar's rather pinched expression. She mistakenly interpreted it as unease with her alien status. She needn't have bothered — Commander Rutherford clearly has much more immediate problems than pondering the nature of the cosmos. Based on the unfolding scene, Margo decides that it will be a miracle if the resident apostate and the resident medic do not annihilate each other in a blast of mutual animosity.

"Your 'standard-issue restoratives' might fix your 'standard-issue' battle wounds long enough to hobble to safety and pray to the Ancestors that a medic or a mage is about, but they ain't doing nugshite for a case of the frost cough that's settled into the lungs, or for a bunch of poor sods who haven't been eating proper for weeks."

"I'll have you know—" Adan starts, but Lud talks right over him.

" And don't get me started on your formulas. 'Standard-issue.' Peh. Standard-issue for humans , maybe. What if we get elves there? Or dwarves? You got one Qunari. Found out what vitaar he uses? Or are you content with giving the giant bastard hives?"

"The Qunari has his own medic to mix poultices for him. Besides, I strongly doubt we'll be seeing any Qunari there — or dwarves, for that matter. But never mind all that — we simply don't have the resources!" Adan finally hollers, arms thrown up in dramatic exasperation. "And how many times do I have to say it, I am not a healer . I'm an explosives specialist."

Lud taps her right foot. "Where's the un-magicked fellow, then?"

"The 'unmagicked fellow's' name is Clemence," Adan growls, "and he is procuring glassware from Enchanter Minaeve. Did I mention resource scarcity yet? Yes? Well, let me mention it again. Besides, he focuses on toxins and antidotes — not treating malnourished refugees."

"Then find me an alchemist who does , 'cuz I wager Josie isn't sending us out to blow up the sodding cultists — or poison them while we're at it — unless you know something I don't."

Adan notices Margo loitering at what she hoped was a safe distance and waves her over. "There. Trained by a hedge witch. You'll get along splendidly."

Margo makes her way towards the irascible pair under Lud's uncomfortably skeptical squint. "Ah, the elven lass. Josie mentioned you." The medic takes a look at Margo's sleeve. "Apprentice, heh. Well, better stupid 'cuz still learning than stupid 'cuz your skull's crammed full of rubbish. Now. How'd you adapt a health potion for an elven elder sick with ague?"

Margo tries to stave off the panic, but she still freezes like a deer in the headlights. Ague? Is Lud talking about malaria? Well. She does have enough context to get a sense of what the dwarven medic is asking for based on the overheard argument. It would appear that Lud is intent of customizing the formulas for a civilian population — and away from the necessities of the battlefield. But there is more to the question. Do different subspecies of Homo theodosicus have slightly different biologies, then? And thereby slightly different responses to the local materia medica? Nothing of the sort was mentioned in any of the compendia she has seen, but it makes perfect sense. She wonders how much of the standardization is a product of the alchemical texts being written by humans, and, presumably, for a largely human audience.

Margo pulls a Munchausen, extracting herself out of the latest intellectual rabbit hole through sheer force of will, and tries to buy herself some time. "How far along are they? Is it a severe case of ague?" she improvises.

Lud narrows her eyes. "All of the blighted mosquito ailments are bad, especially for you lot, what with not having enough food to put on the table. Fine. High fever, and they've got the runs." She thinks for a minute. "Liver's swollen, too."

Margo frowns. So malaria indeed — unless this is a confusing linguistic convergence, and Lud is talking about a completely autochthonous pathogen with no Earth equivalent.

Right. Extrapolate.

"I would..." She hesitates, then forges on. "I wouldn't use a health potion. I'd use a restorative — something that helps support the body until the fever runs its course." If it were Earth — and if it's malaria — then she'd look for either quinine or, better yet, something containing artemisinin. The only plant she's come across that's even remotely reminiscent of sweet wormwood — in taste if not in appearance, since its morphology places it closer to the rhododendron family — is prophet's laurel.

"Well?"

Margo decides to gamble. "I'd make it with prophet's laurel," she states with a nonchalant confidence she doesn't feel at all.

Lud gives her another suspicious squint. "Why that one?"

Do they have a sense of the parasitic nature of malaria? If they know about the transmission vector... "Because it's mosquito-borne," Margo offers with a half-shrug, hoping that her performance of dismissiveness will be read as competence and not its opposite. "I'd also give them something that supports the blood," she adds quickly. "And reduces liver heat."

Just in case this is malaria, and there is accompanying anemia. This is how it would have been treated in classical Chinese medicine, anyway.

Margo's response earns her a nod — calling it approval might be a little premature, but at least Lud is no longer watching her with naked skepticism. "Well, what d'you know, there's a glimmer of intelligence in there. I can work with that."

Margo grins at the dubious compliment.

Her joy at having passed Lud's "test" soon gives way to the intense focus demanded by the craft. The next hours are spent making a truly impressive arsenal of various remedies. Most of the formulas are at least vaguely familiar, and the basic tasks remain the same: grinding, sifting, mixing, decocting, and, finally, as the daylight begins to wane, labeling and sorting the resulting medicines into padded crates. As far as taskmasters go, Lud could give Amund a run for his money. Even Adan sticks around and does his share. Eventually, Clemence reappears with an assortment of vials and a neutral "it is nice to see you again" extended to no one in particular.

"Best get ready." Lud mutters with a look at the window. "Go gather your things, then help me load this stuff, will you?"

Margo nods, sets the last of the vials into their little nests, and takes off towards Solas's hut.

An odd warmth courses up her hand when she turns the doorknob, but the sensation dissipates quickly. She finds the house deserted — Solas's staff and travel gear are missing, but the embers in the fireplace are still warm. In the middle of the table she discovers a folded note weighed down by an odd piece of jewelry on a thin copper chain. She examines the pendant — a simple medal, its contours green with oxidation, the faint outline of a wolf's head embossed into the metal.

She opens the note.

"Fenor, this made its way into my hands after the commander's men eliminated a demon infestation in the Hinterlands. Considering your history, I would be grateful if you wore it: my preliminary examination suggests it may assist in keeping wolves at bay. Until we speak again. Yours. S."

Margo frowns, twirling the pendant in her fingers. She is fairly certain this is meant as a tongue-in-cheek nod to their run-in with the wolfpack all those weeks ago — which started her entire involvement with the elf in the first place.

Except her first association isn't that. It is baba's odd moniker for Solas. Wolfling.

She is still frowning when she slips the pendant's chain around her neck.

###

Of all the changes Margo expected her new role of Alchemist Sans Frontières to involve, riding in a horse-drawn cart never made the list. In part, because she has no idea how — or when — the Inquisition availed itself of horses. She is so distracted by present developments that even the presence of the domesticated Equus genus in Thedas skates along the surface of her attention without capturing it. In her defense, jostling around atop a crate of root vegetables of the turnip persuasion while attempting to master the intricacies of Wicked Grace is no trivial task.

"Prickly, you are awful at this," Varric sighs with theatrical hopelessness after taking a look at her cards. "I dare say even the Seeker might beat you. Didn't I tell you not to lead with the trumps?"

"It would certainly help if the trumps didn't keep changing at every turn," Margo notes acerbically.

Varric emits a martyred grunt, plays his hand, and rakes in the pile of coppers spilled on the canvas sack — this one containing an assortment of dry beans — atop the crate they commandeered as a table. Lud, next to Margo, swears under her breath about sky-addled beardless dwarves — and something altogether unprintable about ancestors. Her diatribe has Varric chortling in delight as if she just paid him a refined compliment. Stitches tosses his cards into the now-empty space on the canvas and gestures his resignation with both hands.

"The chief was right, Varric— you don't just cheat. You cheat at cheating."

"I am simply trying to teach Margo here how the game is really played. No need to get combative."

The two medics narrow their eyes in unison. "Who doesn't know how to play Wicked Grace?" Stitches asks with a puzzled scowl.

Margo shrugs. "Father gambled," she offers by way of an explanation. And she doesn't even have to lie — well, no more than usual. She's had two days on the road to familiarize herself with the stack of documents that Torquemada unloaded on her, though she's hardly made a dent. Perhaps because she got distracted by the letters from her new pen pal, Sir Lancelot the Verbose. His missives were intercepted and summarily read, of course, but at least Leliana had the decency to pass them on. In any event, the compulsively gambling father was a part of Maile's file — and one of the aspects that has been retained for Margo's new persona, an odd melding of Maile's life with Torquemada's fiction.

The others nod sagely — except for Master Tethras, whose smirk is quickly smothered under the most disingenuous expression of grave sympathy Margo has ever seen.

There hasn't been any opportunity to talk to Varric — or any of the others, for that matter. Her section of the convoy is at the very tail end of the long snake that stretches for half a mile down the south road from Haven. Evie and most of the Inner Circle are too far ahead to make much interaction logistically sound. It doesn't take a great strategist to realize that this is a march — whoever is making the decisions is setting a punishing pace for both the people and the horses. From their position in the civilian support team, which Margo has privately dubbed the Carequisition, the vanguard of their expedition is visible only when they crest a hill.

She isn't entirely sure why Varric ended up as their escort — alongside Amund, Cole, and two templars from Evie's new personal retinue — but Margo has the ungenerous suspicion that the dwarf might have volunteered. Still, the new arrangement offers little privacy for a surreptitious chat out of earshot.

If revelations about her nature disturbed him in any way, Varric doesn't let on. On the contrary. Whenever the conversation touches on something unfamiliar — mostly dwarven caste politics and the events of the last Blight, which are the two topics both Lud and Stitches seem to gravitate towards in their discussions of their respective craft and backgrounds — Varric inserts humorous but detailed tales or simply stirs the conversation in such a way as to generate enough context for Margo to file away for future reference. It fits perfectly into his storyteller persona — to the others, it probably sounds like lighthearted banter from a man who has a healthy enjoyment of the sound of his own voice — but Margo isn't fooled. She keeps stealing thankful glances at him. By the second day, Varric probably thinks she is smitten, what with all that grateful gazing, but Margo sees no reason to stop. She'll have to get him an expensive bottle of brandy next time they're out of the wilderness.

On occasion she catches a glimpse of Evie, a minuscule figure riding awkwardly ahead on her palomino pacer, the horse's rolling gait easy to spot between the other mounts. The kid is surrounded by a rotating knot of allies — almost always two of the three mages. Cassandra and Blackwall ride on at the helm, and Bull and the Chargers — minus Stitches — move apace with a group of scouts and scribes in the middle of the convoy. According to Varric, the two wagons at the center transport weapons. Margo just hopes that they are not Seggrit-quality.

The trek affords her a better sense of her new companions and the time to catch up on her pile of reading. The weather is miserable the whole way through, rain mixed with sleet that gives way to simply rain, squelching mud, leaking tents, and campfires that only kindle with accelerant and provide more acrid smoke than warmth. By the end of the first day they are all covered in a thick layer of road grime, but there is little to be done about it. They share two tents between them, Margo electing the one that contains Varric, Cole, and Amund. She is so exhausted by the end of the day from constant forays into the underbrush to gather ingredients that all she can do is curl up, her back against Cole's. Whether because of the spirit's presence or because of something Amund is doing, she doesn't dream — and for the first time in ages, she wakes up feeling rested. She doesn't think Cole actually sleeps, but for some reason he puts on a show nonetheless, likely in a bid to make everyone more comfortable — or perhaps out of curiosity, role-playing at being human.

The further they move away from Haven, the more jovial Lud becomes. The medic turns out to be funny, irreverent, and terrifyingly competent. She cares for bipeds and quadrupeds with the same brusque, relentlessly efficient kindness.

Varric doesn't miss an opportunity to tease her about her brief stint as a prison warden — "How does it feel to find yourself on the right side of the bars for once, Splints?"

Lud growls through a scowl. "'Splints,' Tethras? Really?"

"Well, since Stitches is already taken... All right, all right. Let me think. How about 'Leeches'?"

Stitches is reserved and a little aloof, with a quietly sardonic streak to him that mostly comes out in his interactions with Varric and Lud. His body language suggests that he is clearly uncomfortable around Cole, but he doesn't comment.

Against her expectations, the two templars turn out to be rather likable. Ser Subira, the dark-skinned Rivaini with a crop of wiry grey hair, has a poised, serious purposefulness that reminds Margo of Cassandra. There is something just a little schoolmarmy about the older templar, but not in an unpleasant way — perhaps the result of having spent the last ten years training first year recruits.

Her counterpart — in every sense of the term, as it turns out — is also her opposite in personality. In her late thirties and younger than her lover by about ten years, in Margo's estimation, Ser Deirdre is red-haired, freckled, and volatile, as quick to laugh as she is to spit out a string of profanities — usually at the recalcitrant horses, recalcitrant firewood, and other uncooperative objects. Margo's heart melts a little when she catches Deirdre delivering a sound kick to the wheel of their wagon after they get stuck — yet again — in the viscous mud. "Blighted Ferelden craftsmanship, I'm'a give ye to the darkspawn, see how that suits," she mutters under her breath in Starkhaven's thick brogue.

"How'd you two meet, anyway?" Varric pries on the first day, the nonchalant tone belying the greedy twinkle in his eye — ever the author in search of inspiration.

"We were stationed together in Val Royeaux," Subira offers after a hesitation.

"Bet there's a story there," the dwarf presses. "Can't say I've met too many happy couples in the order."

"Why, she wooed me," Deirdre grins, to Subira's mortified grunt of protest.

"Don't listen to her — she'll tell you tales to make even your ears wilt."

"My ears are very sturdy, don't worry," Varric chuckles. "Wooing, eh? How does one woo a templar?"

An impish twinkle dances in Deirdre's green eyes. "You know... Poetry, flowers, serenades, midnight walks, hiding from the city guards on balconies..." She gives Subira's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Don't get fooled by the steely exterior, Master Tethras, we were young and foolish once, too."

"Speak for yourself, Dee," Subira grumbles, but she shoots the redhead a hopelessly fond look.

When Envy began feeding the templars red lyrium, these two tried to shield as many of the young recruits as possible, inventing ridiculous excuses for why this or that templar was "indisposed." Mostly Deirdre described instances of incontinence in lurid and very convincing detail, and Subira hid the kids in the larder. It hadn't been nearly enough in the end — but it was something. Margo can't help but feel relief on Evie's behalf. At least two of The Nine seem like good folk.

The only one who appears significantly out of sorts is Amund. The further they descend into the valley, the more taciturn the Avvar becomes, and by the second day he is watching the sky almost constantly, deep frown lines bracketing his mouth. Margo asks him what is wrong, but he simply shakes his head and returns his gaze to the heavy cloud cover above the tips of swaying firs. He spends more and more time in meditation, seated cross-legged on his bedroll while the others sleep, his eyes glazed, unfathomable ghosts dancing in their depths.

By the end of the third day, as they roll in sight of the old fortress, the Avvar retires to a hilltop while the others fill their waterskins in the stream below. Margo leaves her sack of embrium and trudges uphill, greasy mud squelching under her boots. "What is it, Amund? You don't seem like yourself," she asks, winded. He lifts his head from the set of polished bird bones scattered on the ground before him — a sight she has grown used to by now, part of the augur's practice of querying his Goddess.

"It is almost time, luzzil spinna. The missives do not lie." He sighs, the sound heavy and desolate. "Lady of the Skies watch over us, because I'm not sure you are ready. Nor that I am, for that matter."

Margo frowns and crouches by Amund in the wet grass. She has never seen him quite so... disconsolate.

"Amund, you're actually beginning to worry me. Not ready for what?"

The Avvar pins her with a long, unreadable look. "For what the Lady brought you for," he says with uncharacteristic softness. And then he gathers his oracle bones and walks away towards his horse. "Come, little spider. It is not wise to keep the gods waiting."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by artemisinin, currently the most effective anti-malarial drug - originally discovered by Chinese scientists in 1972 by following prescriptions used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The doctor in question would go on to win the Nobel price for her (and her team's) discovery._

 _Next up: An explanation for why Amund doesn't care for Solas._

 _AN: Dear readers, Life Stuff (TM) has me scrambling, which is why the updates are slow and a bit unpredictable. I am doing what I can. If I'm slow in responding to your reviews and messages, I apologize — never doubt that every single one of them is a joy to me._


	70. Chapter 70: Upstairs, Downstairs

_In which Margo meets the cultists, and gets to delight in Theodosian class politics._

* * *

"They won't let us in."

Evie plops down next to Varric and pulls her travel cloak more tightly around her narrow shoulders. Five campfires dot the rocky lip between the two sides of the fortress. Only one of the closest fires is clearly visible in the frigid, milky mist. The fogbank has swallowed the wagons, horses, and Inquisition troops meant to guard them — an occasional neigh and the distant clanking of metal the only evidence of their invisible presence in the ravine below.

"Did you ask nicely, Your Worship?" Varric squints skeptically

Evie opens her mouth to defend herself, realizes that the dwarf is teasing, and huffs a half-hearted laugh. "I did say 'please,' if that matters. Speaker Anais won't even let the medics through — nor the food, nor the weapons." The young woman shakes her head in almost comical consternation and proceeds to stare dejectedly at her left hand. "They said that they don't need help. That the Maker is going to cleanse the world of rot, and that the chosen will be lifted up to the Golden City. Except when I asked about the logistics of how exactly that would happen — and who is going to be chosen for the lifting up — Speaker Anais got rather testy."

On the other side of the campfire, Dorian represses a rather inelegant snort. "What? Logical questions met with defensive posturing on the part of the illustrious cult leader? Such a shocking turn of events!"

Varric scrapes up the remnants of his rabbit stew with a crust of dark bread and sends the resulting clump into his mouth. He masticates thoughtfully. "Let me guess. They're waiting for the Maker to send them a sign."

Evie's eyes dart to the neighboring campfire, some fifteen yards away. Cassandra, the Iron Lady, and four of Evie's templars — including Ser Barris — are immersed in a tense discussion — no doubt about what sort of sign the Maker ought to be seen sending, and how the Inquisition might translate it to its benefit.

"Yes," Evie sighs into the sudden, tense silence. "One way or another, it involves me closing the rift at the back of their fortress."

"Let me get this straight, Your Heraldness. These cultists shut themselves inside a fortress... with an active rift in it?" The look of disgusted disbelief on Varric's face is a true work of art.

Dorian shakes his head. "Of course they did."

"Remind me why we're trying to help them, again?"

Behind the veneer of sarcasm, both men's eyes are pinched with worry. Evie shrugs and fiddles with the laces of her boots. "Commander Cullen said that this fortress is of strategic importance. And Josephine thinks that if we can get these people on our side, then maybe they can help the refugees in the area."

"One does have to wonder about their supply routes." After a short hesitation, Dorian accepts a flask of liquor from Varric, takes a small swig, and swears in Tevene

Margo, silent until then, nods her agreement. "Exactly. I strongly suspect that the reason they're not opening the door is because they can afford not to." She turns to Evie. "It's possible that this Speaker Anais is actually saying the truth. They might not need help — at least, not at the moment. In which case, you'll have to impress them some other way."

Evie sighs. "Madame Vivienne thinks that the strongest move for us would be to send me in with just the templars."

Margo hides her scowl by pretending to fuss with the parcels she is about to dispense — the medical travel kits are the official reason for her walking from campfire to campfire. While the rest of the cavalry has been temporarily stymied into forced idleness, she and the medics have been busy setting up a field infirmary and an alchemy station.

"I guess nine templars is enough to take on whatever that rift spits out. It makes sense, in a sick sort of way. Say what you will about the Order, but they're trained for dealing with demons. After a fashion, anyway." Varric picks up an oil rag and sets Bianca lovingly into his lap.

"Before we take up the task of wringing our hands in earnest, did you come bearing gifts, my dear?" Dorian lifts up on one elbow and peers over at Margo's satchel.

Margo grins at him and starts handing out the parcels. "I did. It's basic, but there are some improvements to your usual fare. For example, your standard restoratives are now in pill form. They won't absorb as fast as tonics but will work over a longer period, so just take one with liquid before you decide to pick a fight."

She had already been miniaturizing the restoratives into tablets, but Lud showed her an encapsulation technique that allows for the pills to have an extended release. As it turns out, "some fungus" has the wondrous property of excreting an odoriferous resin when stressed — and, according to Lud, it is "stressed" quite often. While Margo tried to bat away images of a very anxious mushroom guzzling wine and calling its therapist, Lud proceeded to demonstrate that the resin combined with animal tallow formed a gel-like substance that could be used to coat the pills. For a field medic, Lud is amazingly adept at alchemy, and Margo wonders if this is part of dwarven culture more generally. It doesn't take a genius to realize that without the dwarves' ability to work lyrium — and without their firm control over the lyrium trade, in uneasy symbiosis with the Chantry — much of southern Thedas would simply implode.

"There is also rock salve and some other useful stuff in there. Just be careful where you put the salve — the loss of sensitivity lasts for about five hours."

Dorian's mustache twitches. "Is it safe to use on one's ears? For my next encounter with Mother Giselle..."

Margo represses a snort, gives Evie a quick, one-armed hug, and waves her goodbyes before proceeding to the next campfire.

The rest of her delivery route could not be mistaken for anything other than work, so Margo slips behind the mask of professional efficiency she is beginning to pick up from both Lud and Stitches. Cassandra and the templars are amiable but a little aloof. Vivienne is studiously cordial, but her eyes follow Margo with the disturbing impassivity of a currently satiated cobra observing its future prey. Bull and the Chargers, reunited once again, are jovial, but their easy camaraderie is turned inward — a self-sufficient bubble of sociality that needs no outsiders. Blackwall and Sera are with them, and while the bearded bear gives Margo a long, complex look, he does not miss the opportunity to rest one heavy hand on her shoulder, his expression at once solemn and warm. "We should get back to your training," he says simply as he receives his medical kit. "At your convenience."

Sera... is more complicated. Her expression is a hair away from an angry scowl, and she accepts her parcel without comment and tosses it dismissively onto the grass next to her. Before Margo can depart, however, the elven archer catches her wrist. Her voice is pitched low. "Know what, Spindly? Don't give a shite if your ears are round, or pointy, or sodding square, yeah? Don't give a shite what the others say — can't tell a blighted demon from their own arse, well, that's not my problem. But friends don't friggin' lie to friends, do they." Sera releases Margo's wrist and turns away, her jaw set at an angry angle.

Margo stifles a quiet sigh. "I know. I'm sorry I had to."

"Not. Was just easier, so that's what you did." Sera gets up and simply walks away to join the Chargers. She doesn't look back.

Blackwall throws Margo an apologetic look. "Sera's... hotheaded." His eyes crease at the corners. "I'd chalk it up to the impulsiveness of youth, but I'll spare you the bullshit." He hesitates. "She'll come around. And for what it's worth, I understand why you did it."

Margo smiles despite herself. "Are you also from a different part of the universe, Warden Blackwall?"

He rumbles a chuckle. "No, I'm afraid I don't have that excuse. But the Wardens... I get the part about wanting to leave the past in the past."

Margo offers the bearded menace a grateful nod but leaves with a heavy heart. She wonders idly what sort of past he is running away from.

On her way to the last campfire, where she expects to find Amund and Cole, Margo practically collides with Solas. He floats into view out of the fogbank like some spectral apparition — hands clasped behind his back, face tilted skyward. He seems to be deep in observation of the tower's masonry, so he doesn't turn at Margo's muffled yelp — though the corner of his mouth lifts slightly.

"A remarkable structure, is it not?"

Two can play that game. "I'm sure the view from the ramparts must be spectacular." Margo rummages in her satchel for one of the mage-designated kits.

Solas accepts the parcel with a slight bow and takes a small step towards her — too close for merely polite, too far for outwardly intimate. His nostrils flare on a soft inhale. "You have been working with embrium?" he asks casually. "It is believed that ancient elves concentrated an extract from the petals to produce perfume." His gaze drifts to her neck — without the scarf, the copper chain of the new amulet is undoubtedly visible. For some unknown reason, his eyes widen a little. The faint blush makes his freckles more pronounced, but before Margo gets a chance to puzzle out this odd reaction, she finds herself entirely sidetracked — and mildly flustered — by a rather inopportune thought about the freckles' general distribution. Whatever of this translates to her face, Solas's smile takes a turn for the impish.

Margo mobilizes her rapidly scattering thoughts, threatens the butterflies in her stomach with the mental image of a Vladimir Nabokov happily scampering around with an insect net, and turns to observe the stonework.

"You were saying something about the fortress... I'm not a specialist, but it does look quite old and very well preserved." She rubs her thumb along the seam between two stones. The cement that binds them is white and surprisingly smooth. Interesting. If she had a strong acid... "I don't have a way to do a compound analysis, but I'd bet good money that this is a variant of limestone and egg white mortar."

A brief flash of surprise lifts Solas's brows. Then his smile widens before he returns to his observation of the wall. "I must admit, fenor, that while I have learned to expect your uncannily fortuitous guesses, watching you conjure them is still..." he hesitates, fishing for a word. "Unexpectedly satisfying," he finally concludes softly. Margo's breath hitches. The elf has a knack for layering several meanings into a single utterance. "I cannot offer you a means of alchemical analysis, but some of the memories that still linger in the Fade suggest exactly this technique. An ambitious project."

"And costly," Margo nods, catching his train of thought easily.

"Indeed. Accomplished by a wealthy lord in hopes of altering his son's embarrassingly lazy disposition. A residence away from home for the young lordling to become a hero to these lands — or such was the intent, in any case."

"Did it work?" Margo asks, curious.

"It is hard to say." He turns to her. "Forgive me, fenor. Do not allow me to distract you with my musings. The Veil is thin here, and this land is rich in history. I wonder what we shall find once we are admitted into the keep."

Margo grins. "A bunch of people who are emphatically not interested in our help, apparently."

"I suppose it is not surprising that some should turn to worshipping the Breach. Still. A remarkably self-sufficient group sheltered by the sturdy walls of a fortress they did not earn." There is an edge to the words, despite his light tone.

Margo frowns. "I assumed the fortress was abandoned and they simply... took over."

"The noble family that built it still exists and remains influential, from what I understand. I find it difficult to imagine that they would simply relinquish their claim to lands they consider theirs. But no matter." The thick fog affords a bit of privacy, and Solas exploits this. He captures her hand and brushes his lips against the inside of her wrist, the touch warm and incredibly soft. It earns him a reaction that Margo manages to convert into an accusatory look, but not before Solas's expression morphs toward the irritatingly self-satisfied. "I have wasted enough of your time with my pondering. We should return to our duties." He glides away with a final smile, and Margo heads towards Amund's campfire, trying to puzzle out the elf's odd irritation at the keep and its inhabitants.

The hour during which Evie and her retinue are in absentia is spent in a state of hushed anticipation. The decision to follow Vivienne's proposal is finalized in the early afternoon — although, in the end, both the Orlesian mage and the Seeker are to accompany the Herald alongside the templars. Margo can guess at the reasoning behind it. The cultists are a direct answer to the Chantry's failings — the negative image of official religious dogma. To budge them in the direction of the Inquisition requires a demonstration of its ability to outdo the Chantry, and the simplest way to achieve it, in this case, is to show mages, templars, and a Seeker working side by side.

Margo spends the time at her makeshift alchemy bench. There is little to do aside from tidying up — and for once she is grateful that the retort is such a pain to clean. Varric, with his habitual air of slightly sardonic amusement, regales Margo and Lud with stories about Kirkwall. They're not fooling anyone, of course — Varric interrupts his narrative every time muffled noises drift from the keep, and they all listen in tense silence. By the time all is said and done, Margo's alchemical paraphernalia is so spotless it is practically glowing.

When the portcullis emits a plaintive creak and begins its slow ascent, Margo follows Varric to join the others in the greeting delegation. Through the arch, she catches sight of Evie's small figure striding confidently from the depths of the fortress, flanked by Cassandra on her left and Ser Barris on her right. Behind them, Vivienne glides with a sinuous grace, the templars marching stone-faced at her back.

They walk along a living alley of genuflecting worshippers.

It is not until their expedition is admitted into the fortress that the grating sense of confusion that has been nagging at Margo since their arrival finally resolves itself into a more specific picture. It starts with small surprises — for instance, that most of the inhabitants of the keep are exceptionally well-dressed. The robes they wear are similar to those of mages, but the cloth is expensive and well-tailored. Most people look... well-groomed. The mess hall at the back of the fortress boasts an impressively diverse array of foods that indicates a full and rather well-stocked pantry.

It doesn't click until she is hailed by a young lordling with a short buzz cut and such a stunning sense of callow entitlement Margo is left momentarily speechless, even though she should have expected it.

"You, elf. Do you serve the Herald? Or are you yet another refugee?" He grimaces with distaste at that prospect. Margo pivots to demonstrate the All-Seeing Octopus of Sauron on her arm by way of an answer. With visible relief — and a hopeful, beseeching expression that on a better day might have garnered him some sympathy had he not spent that credit with the first few sentences out of his mouth — the lordling queries her about some Lady Vellina who was meant to join him in the fortress. Margo is so utterly flummoxed by the fact that the young lord clearly cannot fathom the possibility that his paramour perished in the civil war ravaging the region that it takes her a bit too long to come up with a coherent yet noncommittal response.

The lordling is more than happy to have an audience to wax poetic about his lover — Margo learns that Lady Vellina is his senior by about three years and betrothed against her will to one of young Lord Berand's distant cousins. The love story is truly Shakespearean, which makes Margo suspect an inevitably tragic resolution. Margo decides that Romeo here will do perfectly well as her first ethnographic subject.

"How many other nobles are here, my lord?"

He blinks at her, uncomprehending. "What an odd question — why, most of us following Speaker Anais are of noble birth. We would not have use of Winterwatch without Arl Teagan's consent. Despite the disturbing rumors about Redcliffe, Teagan Guerrin is still arl of these lands."

Margo is not at all surprised to hear that most of the cultists have one striking commonality — they are the second or third children of local noble families. Some come from other wealthy social strata: the sons and daughters of well-to-do merchants with few prospects of an inheritance, likely because they managed to get themselves disowned. The cult's philosophy fits organically into the young lords' and ladies' preexisting worldview: of course they would be chosen by the Maker. How could it be otherwise?

At Margo's expression, Romeo looks momentarily discomfited — the vague discomfort that comes with the suspicion that one is being an insensitive ass, accompanied by the inability to grasp the exact nature of one's social faux pas. "Well, we took in some refugees with useful skills — we needed a healer, and the elven lad has been most helpful." Early on, Romeo patiently explains, they did admit a small contingent into their ranks in exchange for the work of keeping the fortress running. The nobles, after all, should be allowed to concentrate on prayer and communion without such pesky distractions as washing their stockings. But after those roles were filled, the gates closed. "Have you seen their camp along the northern wall?" Romeo asks with that same expression of appalled distaste. "A truly dismal sight."

Good thing the Maker is scheduled to cleanse the world of its rabble, then. Any time now. Margo manages a polite thanks, and walks off to inform Evie about the refugees, her jaw clenched so hard her teeth hurt.

The meager shelters, cobbled together from sun-bleached debris scavenged along the keep's crumbling barbican, hug the northern perimeter of the stronghold. As she walks alongside Lud and Stitches between the narrow rows of shanties — Evie, Cassandra, and Blackwall at the head of their procession — Margo is surprised to see an almost equal ratio of humans and elves. All fled their homes when the skies ripped open. It's mostly families, quite a few with very young children and elderly relatives — three or four generations huddled together under a single leaky roof. She recognizes the shadows that haunt their faces, human and Elvhen alike — it's always the same ones, lurking in the purple tint beneath the eyes, pooling in the hollowed-out cheeks, etched in vertical lines between the brows. Every family they pass still in the throes of phantom pains. A sister. A husband. A parent. A child. The quiet ache of carrying within you those whose path has ended.

The discovery of the shantytown sets Evie on a collision course with Vivienne and Cassandra — unless it is Cassandra and Vivienne who are clashing. Margo only catches the echoes of the conflict. Something about how to best deploy the cultists — and, presumably, whether to allow the exploitative relationship between the nobles inside and the commoners outside to continue unchallenged in favor of some other political gain.

Margo spends the next two days with the refugees alongside Lud and Stitches. Mostly she writes down stories, draws genealogies — a heart-wrenching task — mixes simple remedies. On occasion, she takes a couple of kids along to gather ingredients in the vicinity, always in view of their mothers' exhausted, wary, relieved gaze. By the second day she develops a bit of a following of her own — a snot-nosed, delightfully grubby troupe. Many of the kids are already competent herbalists, and Margo happily lets herself be shown up, to the general merriment of her barefoot retinue. It's oddly simple, and for a day she almost lets herself forget where she is — it is deceptively easy to recognize parts of her own childhood in theirs.

By the third day, it becomes clear that the Inquisition has splintered into those attending to the cultists and those working for the benefit of the shantytown. Margo has no way of knowing whether this strategy is intentional. She only returns to her own camp to sleep and wash up. Half the time, the tent is empty when she arrives. Amund and Cole are nowhere in sight, and Varric seems to keep odd hours. Aside from the Warden, few of the Inner Circle are on this side of the wall. Sera and Solas make the occasional appearances. Margo spots both in intense conversations with the local residents — Solas exclusively with the elves, Sera more indiscriminately. There is something casually conspiratorial about both of their demeanors, though she is fairly certain they are acting independently, with no immediate awareness of each other's activities. Margo is absolutely sure Sera is recruiting for the Jennies — which leaves the question of what Solas is up to. She catches his gaze on her once or twice, but he doesn't approach her otherwise.

At the end of the third day, Margo is nibbling on a chunk of garlic bread next to Carlissa — a middle-aged, classically attractive elven woman with copper skin, no facial tattoos, and the faraway look of someone who has seen too much death in too short a time. They are both rather absorbed in the process of watching a shirtless Blackwall dig a hole for an additional outhouse. At the foot of the large boulder where they sit, Carlissa's twelve-year-old is sorting elfroot with an air of supreme self-importance.

"Reminds me of my husband, he does," Carlissa sighs quietly and gestures with her chin towards the sweaty, bearded figure swinging a shovel. "Hairy as a mountain bear, too, Nevin was." She pauses, caught by the current of memories. "My sister used to say dwarves are selfish between the sheets. Well, not my Nevin. Had the gentlest hands, never mind the calluses. Maker, I still have dreams, sometimes. Have you a man, lass? Bairns of your own?"

"I did," Margo answers in the same quiet tone, and she lets the silence do the rest. "How'd you lose your husband? Can I ask?"

Carlissa says nothing for a long time. "Terror demons, they're called. Nevin kept them busy long enough for us to run and hide." She looks at the boy below. "I used to be bitter, what with the bairns never turning out like me . But now... couldn't bear the thought of never seeing my Nevin again. Even if it's just traces, like."

Margo swallows painfully. Oh, unspecified and unmerciful deity. No cameras, no cellphones. Someone like Carlissa would never be able to afford a painting of her loved ones. All she would have is the unsteady shimmer of memories — and the ghostly imprint of her husband in her children's faces. Still. It is more than Margo has — or likely will ever have henceforth.

A traceless world, then.

She is caught in the riptide of acute dislocation and doesn't notice Amund until Carlissa's son calls out in warning — a mixture of delight and terror at the sight of the white-maned giant.

"I have come to fetch you, luzzil spinna. All is ready. Come, we have work to do."

He doesn't wait for her to follow before heading towards the cliffs behind the keep. Margo blinks. In lieu of his habitual bluish armor, the Avvar wears an odd long coat — an incongruously intricate work of beads, leather, and small metal objects that clank dissonantly as he walks.

Oh, great. Rituals.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by egg white mortar. Egg white and other animal substances can be used for air entraining and water-reducing purposes when producing cement._

 _Next up: Rituals, lichen, impossible choices, and visits from "old friends."_


	71. Chapter 71: Stranger Gods

_As always, folks, a million thanks for reading. This chapter is going to get slapped with a bunch of trigger warnings, I'm afraid. Most of it is allusions, nothing overly graphic I hope, but there is some heavy stuff coming up. So without further ado._  
 _References to: drug use, war trauma, sexual violence. General mind-fuckery. Cliffhanger. Sorry. *runs for the hills*_  
 _Please see end-notes for translations._

* * *

The ascent is steep and arduous. They clamber up, pathless, over loose rock and craggy vegetation. Amund, for all the years he has on Margo, moves with the fluid ease of a man who learned to climb before he learned to walk. She tries to keep up, but her thoughts get in the way of her body's instincts. Eventually she finds her own rhythm, but not before falling behind the Avvar by a good twenty yards.

When she crests the summit, the dying rays of the sun pierce the heavy cloud cover just above the horizon, dyeing the sparse vegetation atop the rocky plateau a dusty orange. The oblique light pulls purple shadows from beneath a scattering of stony pyramids — flat rocks balanced precariously in vertical and eerily familiar cairns, like mineral sentinels. A storm in the distance breaths with a steady northern wind.

The Avvar stops and squints into the setting sun, then turns his back on it and kneels before a circle of stones — half-buried in the earth and black with layers upon layers of soot. It is already stacked for a fire.

"Sit." He gestures to the spot directly across from him on the other side of the stone circle. "Let us talk before we begin."

Margo does as instructed. She realizes at that moment that their sitting arrangement must be strategic. With the red glare in her eyes, Amund's face is swaddled in shadow, his expression indiscernible. After the Avvar fails to volunteer any further information, she decides that she is probably supposed to lead with the questions.

"Amund, why are we here?"

He observes her for a long time before finally breaking the silence. "You and I walk beneath the same sky, luzzil spinna , and yet you are as blind to the signs as the lowlanders. Let us hope your other eyes see better." He sinks into his thoughts. Then, at length, a sigh escapes him, quiet and resigned. "If you could see, then you would know you are wasting your time."

Margo frowns. "I'm..."

"All of you." He gestures with his hand, an expansive, abstract motion. With the next words, the weariness drains from him, and in its place settles a steely intransigence. "Tell me, why have you come? What wish you to gain?"

She tries to puzzle out the slippery diectic pronoun. "I suppose the Inquisition hopes to gain allies, to raise its reputation. If it can help while doing so..." She trails off.

"I am aware of your organization's petty politics. Like the fussing of mice. No. Why are you here, little spider? You have been filling your ears with the stories of those abandoned by their gods. Those hunted by the maddened ones. What for?" Amund leans forward, his eyes boring into her face. "Or are you as the priestesses of the lowlanders' faith? Stringing the suffering of others like pretty beads for your own display of compassion, yet choosing to remain blind and deaf to its causes? Is your kindheartedness only as good as the eyes that would witness it and the hands that would applaud it?" His eyes glint with simmering anger. "Or worse. Are you like the dreamstrider?" Amund's mouth twists in unrestrained disgust. "Nagraðugr hornkerling , greedy to watch . Slurping the marrow from the dreams that linger in picked-over bones, but never one to lift a measly finger. Never one to pay the tithe, nay."

Margo forces herself not to recoil at the Avvar's sudden, inexplicable wrath. Well. He's not mincing words, she'll give him that. Though, in one sense at least, Amund is not wrong. She chuckles dryly. "I'm here for selfish reasons, yes. Just not the ones you're thinking." She rubs her face with both hands, buying herself a moment to find the words. "I look at these kids, and I see... well, me . Bits and pieces of my own past, however much such a comparison is even possible. Other times familial memories absorbed from countless stories, where you don't know which one is yours anymore. If you're asking me why I'm on this side of the wall, it's because it's the one place I understand. And I don't know how else to help."

"You wish to help?" He makes a sound deep in his throat, somewhere between a snort and a growl. "None of what this Inquisition of yours is doing here will help. Most of the lowlanders in this place will be dead within the year."

The last sliver of the alien sun dips behind the mountain range. "Why?" Margo is vaguely surprised that she manages to keep her voice steady.

Exasperation creeps into Amund's tone. "Because the tear has maddened whichever gods remained. This place is hollow. Who will guide the arrow so that the hunters can fill their families' bellies, hmm? Who will bend the weather to summon gentle rains when the seedlings are young and fragile? Who will whisper a solution to a difficult problem into the ear of a slumbering chief? Who will lift the heart with dreams of sunlight when the night is darkest?"

Margo finds herself digging in her heels against the Avvar's implacable animism. "The folks inside the keep don't need gods, Amund. They have wealth, connections, and the safety that comes with them. And the ones outside need more than a little luck-bending." The bitterness in her own voice catches her off guard.

"When the crows pick their bones white, little spider, then talk to me again about their 'wealth and connections.' Talk to me about luck then. You are not listening." He turns away, extracts a piece of porous pumice-like stone and a fire crystal from the folds of his coat. The kindling catches quickly. Something about the fire seems to settle the augur, his shoulders relaxing into a tired hunch. He sits quietly, staring into the flames.

She tries a different approach. "I'm sorry, Amund. I'm trying. Surely, the gods will be back eventually, won't they? Am I correct to understand that spirits... and demons are attracted to emotion?"

The strange metal ornaments on Amund's coat chime in time with his headshake. "Fill your ears with more of this lowlander drivel and soon you won't know which way the sun rises. Why do those maimed with the blood of the mountain know nothing but the desire to serve? Where do you think emotions come from, outworlder?"

Margo's eyes widen. "Wait a moment, are you saying that spirits..." She hesitates. A discussion of neurobiology and culturally shaped habits of mind is not likely to sway him. " I could feel emotions just fine even before I ended up in your world, but we don't have spirits — at least not in the same way you do."

In the unsteady flicker of the campfire, Amund's expression looks momentarily amused. "Aye. Where did they all go, I wonder."

He summarily ignores her request for clarification. Margo changes tactics. "But dwarves can feel without a connection to the Fade."

The Avvar sits in silence for a long time, his gaze trained on the flames. "I cannot tell you what the children of the stone can or cannot feel. I can only tell you of what I know — and know it too you shall, for why else would the Lady put you in my path?" he offers finally. His eyes are distant and unfocused, firelight dancing in the onyx irises, and he sways gently from side to side, as if slipping, little by little, into a trance. When he finally speaks, his voice drops down an octave, a sound like distant thunder between barren cliffs.

"Gods with us for generations for as long as mountains stand,  
See our children born and dying in the Mountain Father's Hand.  
Pride of mine in my clan's doings is my mother's brother's Pride .  
Love for glacial winds, my sister's, flickers in my rival's eye.  
Side by side with our forefathers, all the Names that carve the Bone.  
When a god dies, sing its passing, new, yet old returns as one."

Amund stops abruptly. "The gods care not for strangers, little spider," he offers with relentless finality. "One does not endure alone. We remember the gods so that they can know themselves. The gods remember us so that we can know each other.

It is probably the longest monologue she has ever heard pass Amund's lips. Margo tries to wrap her mind around the symbiotic entanglement the Avvar is evoking. None of this is metaphor, she reminds herself. She needs to stop defaulting to treating it as such. If spirits are also emotions, then they are not mere echoes, not just refracted light — but also a source, a mirror twin that stares right back from beyond the looking glass. Conversely, memories must leave an imprint in the Fade, but the Fade laminates the material world, and thus memories become themselves material, attached to specific places. Her stomach tightens with the free fall of sudden dread. The cosmic model is terrifying for its uncanny familiarity. It perfectly ties together her own world's concept of place spirits with that of ancestral spirits. For the Avvar, there seems to be no qualitative distinction between gods, emotions, and memories. She bites her lip, thinking. Are all of them aspects of each other?

The world is all that is the case .

And then there's the other question, the one she has been studiously tiptoeing around — and that has her heart fretting painfully against her ribcage. How is such cosmological convergence possible? And what does this mean about the world she left behind?

"Amund, what happens when no such relationship is cultivated? What happens when the memories in a place have nothing to do with its present inhabitants?" She swallows. "What happens when the gods are strangers?"

A scattered sort of thing.

The Avvar's dark gaze snaps into sharp focus. "Ah. Now , you listen. I already told you what happens. It is for this that my clan values your kind, luzzil spinna ." His thin lips press into a grim smile, bitter as wormwood. "The time for dawdling has passed. Do you still wish to help the lowlanders?"

At the sight of the two lichen — ougfan'sluzzil and ougfan'sloz — combined together into a truly ghastly brownish mush that stinks of turpentine and socks, Margo considers trying to plead with the augur — or, if that fails, run away screaming. But he hands her the ornate snuffbox with the horrid substance before she can so much as voice a protest.

"So how do you detoxify the Veil Lock? How does one take it safely?" she asks, mostly to buy herself time before she, presumably, has to ingest the nasty stuff.

She could swear there is a twitch to the Avvar's lips, but it is difficult to say for certain in the unsteady light. "You do not use ougfan'sloz without ougfan'sluzzil , outworlder. Not unless you wish to leave your body behind and walk across the Land of Dreams to wherever your final path takes you. If so, there are easier ways to die. How did you come up with such a harebrained idea?

Margo hopes the flickering light of the fire obscures her blush. How indeed. Oh unspecified and mercilessly ironic deity, she even had tried to convince Lancelot the Rightfully Suspicious to take the blasted lichen. She really needs to stop grazing her way through the countryside like some demented locust. "So what happens if you combine them, then?" She takes the box with poorly concealed reluctance. Maybe she won't have to eat the stuff. Maybe it's enough to smell it — or, better yet, to stare at it intently.

"Do not plead foolishness. You know already."

Margo sighs. Socratic method, then. "You're going to tell me it makes it easier to enter the F— Land of Dreams, aren't you?"

She identifies the guttural rumble as the Avvar laughing. "Lowlanders fancy themselves wandering into the Land of Dreams like it's their own stables. No. Leave such nonsense behind. You take the lock and key so that the Land of Dreams can enter you. Such is the price the gods exact of those who would query them." He considers her solemnly, his merriment gone as soon as it manifested. "I will guide you as best I can, but without a clan to add their voices, the cost is a Weaver's to bear. Will you pay the tithe, outworlder?"

Margo huddles around herself. This is going to be awful, isn't it? But then she thinks of Carlissa's son sorting elfroot into neat little bundles at the foot of the boulder. Of the absent loves that dwell among the shanties, like forlorn uninvited guests — and the prospect of their slow yet inexorable multiplication. More and more ghostly absences. Or one sudden catastrophe, with no time to say goodbye.

All dead within the year.

At length, she nods. The Avvar gives her a long look, and then he brings his hands up, and, slowly, with a hunch to his shoulders and a hitch to his fingers, peels off his mask. Beneath the long white mane that frames his worn and weathered face — still handsome despite the years' imprint, but suddenly and disconcertingly bare — four parallel pallid scars bisect the skin of his forehead and cheekbones. They look like claw marks.

He chuckles at her blatant staring. "I once had it in mind to refuse the gift of the gods. Perhaps you have more sense than I did, little spider."

###

The nausea is crippling — but it is nothing compared to the unbearable thirst. The Avvar let her have two sips of water, then snatched the waterskin away before she could drink her fill. Margo lies still on the dry, packed earth, the whoosh whoosh whoosh of blood in her ears at once deafening and muffled, like the roar of a distant surf. Above her, stars float in the darkness, vast and blind and senseless.

She isn't sure how much time passes — isn't sure, in fact, whether time still exists in the strict sense of the term. Moments stretch and cycle, viscous, punctuated only by Amund's raspy chanting. It is a strained sound, occasionally interrupted by shaky, guttural growls.

Whatever he is doing pains him.

The memory emerges from somewhere she has no name for, but it condenses at the periphery of her vision — a dark, glossy shadow — and she teeters on its edge. It pushes, undeniable, like the contractions of birth. She gives in, lets it slip into her with a single thought — to find some ease for her twisting, dislocating mind.

And then, she becomes with the memory.

Despair. Darkness, distant fires. The neighing of horses. Sweat, leather, and smoke — and something else, sweetish and wrong. She clutches the two bundles to her sides, one in each arm, and sits to rest her feet, heavy and aching, each step an agony, as if she were shod in leaden shoes. The bundle under her left arm has not moved since morning. She can't look. If she doesn't look, it's not real.

At her side, a dragonfly lands on a wilted stalk of spindleweed and lays its eggs, oblivious and unperturbed.

The Avvar's chanting — a tether she feels down in her very essence — falters, then changes. Something hollow-eyed and hungry is hurled away, past the uncertain boundaries of their flickering circle. The shadow drifts.

The respite is a brief one. The chant reels in another shadow, old, from deep within the stone.

Rage. Pure white rage pounding in his lower belly. Rage at the crumpled shape beneath him, rage and triumph that drowns out everything, even the burns, rage as the thing squirms and tries to crawl away. He is stronger. He overpowers it, fumbles with his belt, then frees himself. Pliant flesh, struggling no longer, and with a maddened gasp—

Margo cries out, wrenches the sticky awfulness away, and flops onto her stomach in time to vomit a thin string of caustic bile onto the dusty earth. Amund's voice rises in pitch. The rage and the terror it calls home recede. She crawls away from the fouled-up spot, but another shadow jostles the previous horrors aside, impatient, its hooks already snagging on her mind.

Fear. The fire long since cold. Quiet outside, now. She clutches Bandit's warm, furry hide, fingers tangled in the coarse fur. She'll count to one hundred, and this time, when she's done, they'll be back. Shh, good boy. Just wait, this time it'll work for sure, you'll see. She has a good feeling about this one. And Mamma will hug her and tell her she was being so brave just like her big brother and kiss that spot on the side of her nose that always makes her giggle, even if she's almost seven and way too old for that, and she'll look all calm and say "of course," like Brent when he comes back with a couple of fresh rabbits for dinner, and Bandit will bark and run in circles like when he was a puppy, and Father will scold her a little for letting the fire go out, and then he'll ruffle her hair, and they'll stack the kindling together. As long as she doesn't skip any numbers, they'll be back. She'll take it slow, so she doesn't accidentally lose track...

The memory drifts on. Margo's eyes burn, but her body doesn't have the water to sob.

"Too many dark gods, little spider." Amund's voice is hoarse. "I could spare you this, if you wish. Plenty of softer dreams within the walls."

Her lips move soundlessly. "Will..." Her throat seizes. "Help all? Refugees too?" she rasps out.

"No. You must choose."

She moves her head from side to side.

She loses count. Centuries pass. The memories rip through her, a vessel — a vassal to the dreams this wretched place dreams to itself. She is no longer sure which ones belong to the refugees and which are older, embedded in the rock.

And then, when there is little left of her, there, hidden at the bottom of the haystack of nightmares, she stumbles upon the memory that changes everything.

He climbs to the top of the broken wall — the one with the crow nest — and dangles his feet over the drop, kicking his heels against the rocks. Beside him, in a crack between two stones, a single elfroot grows, as if it never even noticed where it planted itself. He lays on the warm stones then, props his chin on his hands, and he watches a fat little bug, its shell shiny and dotted with red, crawl along a leaf.

He misses Father. He misses old Mag, too. Mother tries to cry all quiet-like, but it's not like the tent has any walls. But she doesn't cry as much now that they have a roof, so that's something. He tells Fria silly stories about Clever Little Fennec — stupidest character he's ever come up with, but it's the one thing that'll get a smile out of her. Probably 'cause she looks like a clever little fennec herself.

He'll go gather plants with Mother's new friend tomorrow again, and maybe he'll find grubs too — good when fried, just don't eat too many or it's to the outhouse with you. Maybe Mother can trade the elfroot for oil.

This place isn't so bad. Better than the last one, anyway. He likes how the sun smells on the stones. He likes the stream below, the one with the mantis shrimp — he'll teach Fria how to catch them when she is a bit older and grows out of the clumsy. He likes the large pine tree on the other side of the bridge — with the pinecones as big as his head, and the nuts that pop out when you toss the cones into the fire. He likes listening to them crackle and the way the smoke makes the nuts taste almost like the meat old Mag used to prepare for winter.

He likes the weird little piles of rocks on top of the cliff.

Margo clutches the dream, holds it tight, but it begins to slip away like all the others. Stay! Stay stay stay , she pleads with it. She tries to concentrate it like an elixir, desperate, fumbling for anchors to fix the scattering mosaic, grasping for the living thread of feeling that weaves it together, the hidden note in Amund's raspy chant — the smell of sun-warmed stones, the rocky cairns atop the cliff, the tree with its bounty of nuts. Stubborn little roots clinging to the cracks of an old crumbling wall.

And then, seconds before it escapes her grasp, the dream suddenly snaps into focus... and stares back.

"What would you have of me, val'haselan ?" Amund asks with the voice of another.

* * *

A quick glossary of foreign terms:

 **Nagraðugr hornkerling** : corpse-coveting old crone in Old Norse (or as close as I can get).  
 **val'haselan** : Something like "weaver of memories" or "spinner of memories"

This chapter was brought to you by Amund, who has exactly zero patience for humanitarian tourism, lowlander bullshit, and Solas.

Next up: Transacting with the other side.


	72. Chapter 72: Impostor Syndrome

Trigger warning-ish: a certain choice spirit, really not on his best behavior.

* * *

Margo forces her body into a sitting position, loses her balance, and careens to the side. London Bridge is falling down... Her cheek meets the ground with a painful yet distant thwack. She tastes copper at the back of her throat.

After some fumbling, she manages to regain a semblance of verticality — Tower of Pisa style.

She isn't sure what she was expecting of the possession state. Some kind of visual overlay, perhaps, where she might be able to see the contours of another being beneath the Avvar's skin. A change in mannerisms, minimally. But for all intents and purposes Amund remains exactly as he is — except for his voice. It's neither high nor low, neither loud nor quiet, neither female nor male, neither hostile nor friendly. In fact, it has nothing whatsoever to recommend it — a complete and utter abstraction. Affectless, but not robotic. Passionless, but not indifferent. It is simply a voice. And it isn't the least bit human — however one might define that term.

"Whom am I speaking with?" she asks, and she is momentarily overwhelmed by the utter surreality of the question.

Amund — and his passenger — watch her over the flames.

"I do not care for names," the voice responds placidly, as if its nameless status were a mere observation about the weather. A pause follows, during which Margo has the distinct feeling of being examined — that particularly unpleasant species of observation that she has always associated with 19 th century naturalists in the throes of vivisecting small amphibians. "I am everywhere now. I am as multiple and common as is sand, and just as unremarkable. Though, if you would like, you may call me Legion."

For we are many . Margo swallows back a wave of terror.

"You... are not quite what I expected," she manages. Because when interacting with something that may or may not be a demon, blurt out the first thing that pops into your head. In her defense, there is probably no point in trying to dissemble — whoever is watching her through Amund's eyes can likely see beneath appearances.

Very slowly, it nods the augur's head, seemingly in understanding. "Yes. At one time, the thread you followed would have led you elsewhere."

When it doesn't say anything else, Margo tries to regroup her scattering (and unhappily bleating) thoughts. "Where would it have led me?"

"To a name I no longer carry."

"Can you tell me some of your former names, then?"

"If you wish, val'haselan ." The thing cocks Amund's head to the side. "Once, I was Resilience, but without Wisdom, I became Endurance. Once, I was Endurance, but without Faith, I became Survival. Once, I was Survival, but without Hope, I became... Legion."

She hears the capitalization in the words. These are all proper names. "Why... What happened? Why did you end up without the... others?"

"Because the two sides are sundered." It pauses. "Now there is only the Many."

Margo frowns. The being would give Gollum a run for his money, as far as cryptic nonsense is concerned. But whatever it is, it still... came through. Something about that last memory, that last thread she frantically yanked on led to something. Or, rather, called something forth.

"Can you help the refugees survive?" she asks. Because it is the only question that matters, in the end. The reason behind the entire operation.

"What for?"

For a moment, there is something discordant about Amund's movements, as if his body is experiencing a mute sort of discomfort. Margo's heart rate speeds up. She doesn't know what being possessed feels like, but it is probably wise to not let the process drag on. She forces herself to slow down her breathing. Right. As long as it's not crawling backwards on the ceiling and spewing green pea soup...

"You were Survival once. Could you not... recall that state? You did respond to the memory's call, didn't you?"

"I am what is the case, val'haselan . And the case is Legion."

Margo grinds her teeth, trying to quell the sudden flash of frustration. And the award for least helpful mentor goes to the Avvar shaman. Amund so did not equip her with enough information to deal with this. Fine. When in doubt, ask for directions.

"Legion... What would you need to become Survival again? Hope, right?" She inhales. "I think there is quite a bit of hope in that memory. The one that pulled you here. It is what brought you, is it not? Some part of you dwells there."

The Avvar's expression remains impassive. "There is no place where I do not dwell, fleshling."

Tricky bastard, it's actually playing coy. Because it certainly didn't come through with the other memories, did it?

"But there is a specific thread I pulled, built into a specific memory, and you responded. You said so yourself."

"Perhaps I was curious."

She hesitates. "Is... is Curiosity with you, then?"

Amund's body jerks, the movement jagged and unnatural. And then he smiles — an uncanny rictus, not malevolent, but also not right , like something glued on as an afterthought. Margo fails to repress a shudder. The eerie smile dissipates as fast as it came on. "No. But it is with you . Many are with you, val'haselan . I have not met your kind before, though the I that I am no longer once did." The Avvar's expression shifts — and Margo shrinks back. There is something... It's not wistful. Wistful is too gentle for the sentiment. Or, if it's wistful, it's wistful on steroids. More like... Covetous . Greedy. If it were a human wearing it, it would look like a species of lust. Though that's not quite it, either. Even though the being uses Amund as its vessel for the expression, the translation is outside of Margo's interpretive register — and she finds herself immensely grateful for that small mercy.

"You wish me to dwell with the mortals here? You are asking for the impossible, for I already am. I am what they share between them."

She doesn't know what it's saying, exactly, but something about its intent feels suddenly recognizable. Something familiar about its awful, incomprehensible longing.

"No, I want you to help them. Help them... more than just survive."

Amund's body leans forward. "It is not in me to help."

Do the Avvar draw a distinction between spirits and demons? Does the distinction matter in this case? Her lips feel numb. "What would it take, then?"

Amund shudders, and suddenly, it is the augur's baritone that comes through, distorted by terrible strain. "Weave, spinna. Make the god remember. Weave it into place. Hurry!"

The panic courses through her veins like a poison. Her mind goes completely, helplessly blank. Shit shit shit, think, think! What did the thing say? Without Hope, it became... Legion.

Without... Like alchemy. Mixture. Another ingredient. Many are with you, val'haselan.

Memories. Ishmael wanted a memory. Her exchanges with Solas. Like a... like a currency. Her dream bubbles, sketchy and awkward, a toddler's doodle.

She closes her eyes. Hope. She digs into herself in search of it, but in her panic all she comes up with are bitter draughts. The promise of her parents returning, despite the news on Baba's old crackling radio — " fire bomb ... five civilian deaths... Hungarian journalist, French documentary filmmaker ..." The promise of treatment for Lilly. Jake. I'm gonna stay clean this time, you'll see . She wades through the debris as if through a bog.

She doesn't think she's going to find anything at all — so much for incorrigible optimism. And then...

It's pathetically, absurdly banal. Personal to the point of being a little embarrassing. She is home, in front of a mirror, and trying on a new dress. It looks pretty good — brings out the bronze undertones of her skin, makes her eyes — a muddy hazel on the best of days — look respectably green. A third date. Not quite a colleague, since the astrophysicist is technically in another department, but it beats the howling train wreck that her experience with Tinder has been. It's early fall, the little university town bustling with student life. There is a hipster bar off Main Street, with tabletop games and a whole lot of ironic Elvises. They make a lovely Dark and Stormy. As it turns out, and in addition to their shared love of Game of Thrones , she and the physicist have another thing in common. Backgammon.

"Are you ready to lose? *cracks knuckles*" she texts him. When she's halfway through the makeup routine, the phone pings. She almost drops the mascara down the drain.

"Asked Napoleon at Waterloo."

Margo grins like an idiot.

It's that little feeling, the quiet laughter, bubbly, just below the surface. Something so often there in childhood — the same feeling that ran through the memory she plucked from Carlissa's son. The anticipation of something bright and warm right around the corner, despite all previous experiences. Joy over the small presents the universe leaves under one's pillow. She tries isolating the emotion, one thread among others... but there is no detaching it. It is what makes the memory, the solvent for all of its ingredients.

Her heart constricts, but she forces herself to bottle the whole thing, to encapsulate the bubble. A perfect moment, frozen in time.

She opens her eyes. Amund watches her with that eerie, covetous expression.

"You can have it," she says quietly and closes her eyes again — as much to get away from that hunger in the augur's face as to hold the feeling-memory together.

At first, nothing happens. But then something brushes against her consciousness — something hard and sharp and colorless, like a diamond — and the memory vanishes, leaving no trace. And with it, the warm, bubbly, fluttery tingle it contained is gone from her, no longer in her repertoire.

Margo opens her eyes, wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hand. Across from her, Amund blinks slowly. The presence is still there — though something about it feels changed.

"You can make more memories, val'haselan ." The voice is softer, brighter around the edges — and now gendered very distinctly female. "I do not have that luxury."

"Whom am I speaking with?" Margo asks through sudden, mind-crushing exhaustion.

Amund's passenger appears to mull this over. "You can call me Constancy." It pauses, contemplating her. "I will do as you bid me. I will help them endure."

And with this, it departs.

The moment the spirit vacates the augur, Amund's eyes roll back in his head, and he collapses with a slowness that would be comical under different circumstances. Margo is not in a laughing mood. She tries to scramble up to her feet, but her world spins mercilessly off-kilter, and she finds herself on her hands and knees, narrowly avoiding planting her palm into the burning cinders. She plops back down on her ass, fumbles at her belt, and extracts an elfroot potion. She downs the contents in three gulps.

Absolutely nothing happens.

Right. Idiot lichens, unpleasant plant parasite on all of them. Ougfan -what's-its-face, likely interfering with the elfroot. She crawls towards the augur, careful not to accidentally tip over or set herself on fire. Sharp pebbles bite into her palms, but the pain is distant and doesn't cut through the mind-fog.

An eternity later — she loses time in the process — she presses her fingertips to Amund's neck, trying to locate a pulse. It is strong and steady, but he doesn't so much as stir.

Help. She needs help. Solas, or Cole, or Dorian. Except there is no way she can descend from the plateau in this state — she will fall to her death. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. And then took a hallucinogenic drug and went kersplat. She bites back a shaky laugh.

A branch snaps behind her. Margo whirls around — or rather spins ineffectually, fighting back sudden nausea — and peers into the darkness. Maybe Solas or Cole followed. Hell, she'd even be happy to see the Iron Lady right about now.

It's probably bears. Hungry ones. With inordinately dirty claws.

The shadows remain still, but watchful.

She turns back to the campfire — and strangles a scream.

"Why, hello, poppet."

Oh no. No no no.

Imshael isn't wearing Solas today. Oh no. He is wearing Ser Asshat.

"Cosmic shitgibbon," Margo nods, though her teeth have taken up the questionable task of clattering. "You're early. I'm pretty sure a month hasn't passed. Scat."

It titters. Fucking titters . "I'm sure a month has passed somewhere. " Imshael-via-Lancelot the Misused graces her with a sharp, blindingly white smile and arranges itself in a cross-legged position. "It's always in the semantics, poppet. Gets them every time. Can you blame me, though? Tasty little morsel that you are, how could I possibly stay away? I was positively languishing. " Its grin becomes feral. "Pining. No, no, surely there is a better epithet. Aching. Burning — now, burning, that's a good one. Counting the minutes."

"Oh, fuck off," Margo scowls, with as much irritation as she can plaster over the terror. "I have no interest in your theatrics. Go rot in the Void, or wherever it is that you stay when you're not being a waste of oxygen."

"Language, poppet! Language. Or I might have to wash out that lovely mouth of yours." It folds its borrowed features into a semblance of coyness. "Or find a better use for it. I can think of a couple." It leans forward. "Fill it with screams. Fill it with blood. Make it beg. Yes. I think I would like thatvery much."

Margo simulates an almost convincing yawn. Lady Vigard would be proud. "You done? What do you want?"

"Right down to business? No niceties? I do so like your forwardness, da'elgar." The awful leer vanishes and is replaced by a kind of affable chumminess. It's not an improvement. "Actually, I want to offer you a wonderful opportunity. You and I are going to be great friends. An offer you can't refuse, is that the right turn of phrase?"

"What part of 'fuck off' wasn't clear?"

It throws its hands up in mock conciliation. "Fine, fine, have your moment of indignant denial. It wouldn't be fun without all the protestation ." It makes it sound utterly obscene. "No, this is good. You see, this world, if you pardon my language, is going to become a very interesting place, very soon. And yours truly has made some remarkable friends recently. Powerful friends. Changes are coming. May you live in interesting times, and all that."

Margo shudders despite her best efforts. Goran. Goran had said something similar.

"What's with the new costume?" she asks, to buy herself some time. Maybe if she can distract it...

"Oh, this?" The demon shrugs. "I suppose I have a taste for impostors." Its eyes take on a steely sheen. "Such a curious thing, you know. I had thought the wolf — cunning old thing that it is — would have figured you out by now, what with all that surreptitious snogging. In the Waking, in the Dreaming. Hmm. Fun to watch, but still a bit... bland, if you ask me. But looks like the old Avvar beat him to the punch, and with no snogging at all! Now, now, I admit. I didn't see it at first either. Tricky little da'elgar, you're even more interesting than I thought. Selfless poppet, giving out this, giving out that. So generous with yourself. Restoring boring old Constancy back to its former glory. Well, here, anyway. We are Many, yes? Keep at it a little longer, and there won't be much left of you." It clucks sympathetically. "Now, that would be a waste."

"Is there a point to your soliloquy?" Margo grinds out.

"You have somewhere else to be, poppet? The stuff you scarfed down — brave, foolish girl — isn't going to wear off for another few hours. You can barely walk. Your self-styled mentor is taking a nice long nap. No one knows you're here." It lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "And you are... so deliciously open to the likes of me. The way I see it, you and I are going to have a wonderful time together."

She needs to change strategies. The cosmic shitgibbon has a point. She can't fight it, not in this state. If she has a couple of hours until the lichens wear off... she is going to have to pull a reverse Scheherazade. Right. Keep it talking.

"You're beating around the bush a lot," Margo comments. She picks up a nearby stick and pokes the fire, releasing a flare of sparks into the night sky. She keeps one end of the stick in the flames and holds on to the other end. Poker to your face, as Sera might have it. She wouldn't dare use Molly, not in her current condition. "Is there an actual offer at the other end of all your yammering?"

The creature claps its hands, the sound drawing a sleepy and indignant avian hoot from the bushes. "Ah, now we're talking. See, I knew you would be reasonable." It rests its chin on folded fingers. "What if I told you that... you could go home?"

Margo almost drops the stick. A line from Robert Browning flits across her mind. My first thought was, he lied with every word. She can't remember the rest to save her life.

Focus. Eyes on the prize. Keep it talking. As long as it's in the business of trying to strike a deal...

"I doubt that's possible," she hears herself say. "I'm pretty sure I died in my world."

The demon folds Ser Asshat's features into a solicitous smile. "Oh, you mean Rage? Reparable. I can help you fix that, you know." Its eyes twinkle with mischief, a horribly charming expression on its stolen face. "Ha! Let's call it the Dispossessed."

"I strongly doubt you'd be able to do that." Stall it.

"Oh ye of little faith! Isn't that what they say?" It laughs, delighted at its cleverness. "I could do that and much more." Its voice becomes threaded with soft, sticky intimacy. "Don't you want to go back? This world isn't yours, poppet. It will eat you alive and lick its fingers. Don't you want to see... your loved ones? Get back to your books? A normal life? What's the name of that fellow you fancied? What about your brother? Jake, was it? I wonder how he's faring."

The ground drops from under her, so Margo busies herself with tending to the flames.

"Ah, my scrumptious little treat, did I hit a nerve? You are so delightfully transparent. The Herald will be just fine without you. Yes, yes, you'd miss the wolf a bit, but... well. Would you not trade him for your old life? You know he can offer you nothing but ruin, don't you? What shall we call it? Ah, how about... Impostor syndrome! Yes, I do quite like that." Another self-satisfied chortle. Her hands itch to drive the poker through its eye. Except, she can't. And not just because she probably doesn't have the coordination at the moment. Oh, unmerciful universe...

"What's the catch?" It's not her voice. She isn't saying it. Is she?

It scoots over, and before Margo can draw back, the demon is seated right next to her. Their knees are brushing. The creature smells strongly of some kind of woodsy cologne, and faintly of dead things. Oh holy hell, what is she doing... It's lying, it's lying, it's a liar...

"Why would I lie, da'elgar? I always tell the truth, give or take. Not like... some people we know." It rests Ser Asshat's hand on her thigh, the touch warm through the fabric. Margo recoils. The thing gives out a merry chuckle. "Too soon, poppet? I'll be patient. I can be very patient. After all, time is irrelevant to my kind."

Stall him.

It . She needs to stall it . "There is still the problem of transferring my consciousness back," she ventures, for lack of anything better to say.

"Oh, that's easy." It leans closer, a perfect replica of de Chevin. Distantly, Margo wonders at the strategy behind the thing's disguises. "The Herald will be off to close the Breach soon, yes? With all those templars pouring their power into suppressing the Fade. What if I told you that one might borrow a bit of that energy to... send you back? It might make things a titch unpredictable on this side, but that won't be your problem anymore. You'll have your world."

Margo is gripping the stick so tightly she can feel the rough bark biting into her skin. "You never answered my question," she says with a voice not her own.

"And what question would that be, poppet?"

"The one about semantics. What's the catch?"

It laughs in delight, reaches with its hand, and brushes its knuckles along her ear. Margo shudders and fights another bout of nausea. Keep it talking. Eyes on the prize.

"You are a wonder , aren't you, morsel? I do so enjoy a fast learner. Oh, you and I will have so much fun, it will be positively glorious! The semantics are simple. You'll carry a bit of me with you."

Margo makes a rude noise. It's a passable rendition of derision, incipient horror notwithstanding. "A part of you? Will you be giving me a heart-shaped locket with a lock of your hair, then? Some fingernail clippings? Wait, wait, I've got it. A tooth!"

It leans in. She can feel its breath on the skin of her cheek. "If you want a more, how shall I put it, material memento, poppet, you have but to ask. But... no. Though, really, it's still such a triviality. Nothing you haven't already done with the wolf. Well. A bit more, but I'll make it... enjoyable. Familiar, if you want. Or not. I'll wear whatever face you'd like." It leans a little closer, lips against the shell of her ear. "You won't even know it's me."

Stall it. Stall it. Oh unmerciful universe, if you're listening...

"Why? Why would you want such a thing?" There must be a rule book out there somewhere about how to deal with cosmic villains. Indulging the tedious shitgibbon's verbosity seems like a classic approach. "Or are you a bored demon? Getting itchy feet, want to see the sights the multiverse has to offer, that sort of thing?"

" Choice spirit. Names matter." It shrugs. "Why, she asks. Insurance for a rainy day, of course. See, this world is changing, my sweet morsel. One way or another. Have you asked the wolf about Mythal yet? Clever old bat, that one. A little bit here, a little bit there. Wouldn't want to put all your eggs in one basket — in case someone decides to make an omelet." Its voice becomes insinuating. "Although not just any basket would do, you see — unless you're content with running around as an abomination. Very humorless, that lot. But you, my little poppet..." She can hear the thing lick its lips. "... are just the right fit. I wonder what you might become with a little bit of me mixed in. But I am getting ahead of myself, aren't I? A whole new world to play in — and one without the Veil, did I overhear correctly? Imagine the possibilities! "

She acts before she has a chance to think. Her movements are fast — thank you, Maile, for your incredible reflexes.

But, of course, it's not fast enough. Or, rather, the demon cheats. All she manages to pierce is empty air.

It is upon her before she can regroup, and she is knocked on her back, the sudden weight crushing her into the ground. The stick flies into the bushes.

"Oh, it's like that , is it?" it hisses, its face distorted with rage. "And here I thought I'd be courteous and ask nicely ." Beneath the mask it wears, she can see the utterly alien consciousness of the other.

There is a growl from the darkness. And then a shadow leaps across the campfire, knocking the demon off her in a mess of furry limbs, bared teeth, and snarling wrath. She catches a glimpse of yellow eyes, the light refracted into a beam of green. Jaws snap around empty air.

There is no trace of Imshael.

Her eyes meet the wolf's. The animal is charcoal gray, squat and square, broad across the shoulders. Its snout is more elongated than those of its Earthly counterparts. It considers her for a few heartbeats, then howls to the indifferent sky — a long, bloodcurdling sound. And then, before Margo can so much as blink, it bounds off into the night.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by a public service announcement. Do not eat "little purple berries" or equivalent on top of a rocky plateau with no easy way to come down.

Next up: Margo begins to dig around for answers in earnest while the universe interferes.


	73. Chapter 73: Trade Secrets

_In which Cole sheds some light on the situation - in his own way._

* * *

The shaking sets in belatedly, but Margo is almost grateful for its arrival — minimally, it's a recognizable response. She knows better than to try to rein in the tremors. She maneuvers herself closer to the fire — close enough that the heat becomes unpleasant — and focuses on not biting her tongue. Her teeth are doing a rather convincing castanets imitation.

She isn't sure how long she simply sits there. Every action, however banal, feels terribly deliberate. Her hand picks up a branch from the pile Amund prepared. The branch is placed slowly on top of the burning logs, propped at an angle. Flames lick at the bark. Sap hisses and bubbles. The hand returns to her lap, to clasp the other icy one. Every noise, however infinitesimal, makes her want to crawl out of her skin — or take off at a dead run in a random direction. The only reason she does not is that she feels glued in place, her mind painfully, helplessly vacant. It's the frozen howling vastness of the tundra in there.

The Great Old Avvar Yoda is still sleeping it off, the bastard.

When a shadow materializes at the edge of their firelit circle, Margo emits a strangled yelp, but her body is so absorbed by the process of rattling that she doesn't even attempt to get into a fighting stance.

Her luck seems to have turned somewhat. The lanky figure in the wide-brimmed hat stalks over soundlessly, and before she knows it Cole is throwing his arms around her and pulling her close. He smells like a teenager — sweat, grime, and something sweet and sticky, as if he just scarfed down a pastry — and Margo smiles despite herself, because the scent reminds her viscerally of Jake at that awkward liminal age, when his nose was still too big for his face, and she had to remind him that hair needs to be washed on occasion. She clings to the spirit as if he were a lifeboat, and he rocks them gently from side to side, humming something at the back of his throat in a eery, pitch-perfect tenor.

"I tried to come fast, but you were very far," he chides.

"Is Amund going to be all right?" she asks, huddling closer. Slowly, the tremors begin to wane.

Cole looks over, then nods solemnly. "Slipping, sliding, slumbering. Voices like vines, twining in place, bringing the spirit forth. He sings alone. Only once before without the others, the Lady's signs show only one path forward. Gambling on a little spider. Tired, so tired, eyes full of sand." He exhales. "He needs to rest. Singing is difficult without all the voices."

Margo's sigh ends on a shudder. "Cole, I..." She deflates. Regroups. Tries again. "Help me. Please? I am so lost. I don't understand what's happening to me. I don't understand what Amund and I just did." The sob expands in her chest like a balloon ready to burst. "I don't understand anything."

"Shh. You helped. Not just the refugees, you helped Constancy, too. With Hope, it can remember its purpose." He pats her back tentatively, as if she were a skittish cat ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. "It was rude of Imshael to come when he did. He's not very nice. I don't like him."

A watery laugh escapes her. "You can say that again."

"I don't like him," Cole obliges. "Not even a little bit."

They sit in silence for a few heartbeats, holding on tight, Hansel and Gretel.

"I'm sorry that I can't help. I can only take away. But you don't need less — you need more."

"What do I do, Cole?" Margo disengages from the young man's embrace but refuses to break contact completely, twining her fingers through his. His hands are rough, though the calluses do not seem a functional extension of their owner's dagger use, but rather of some other habit of physical labor. "At the moment, I don't understand enough to even know what questions to ask."

"You should talk to Solas. He needs to know. He cannot help if he doesn't know."

"Know what?" Margo's stomach attempts to find an escape route through her heels. How much can Cole actually see?

"About Redcliffe. About what Imshael stole. And about the one who tends the Roots, bone of your bone, separate but same." Cole's pale gaze grows distant. "Branches twining on skin, walking in the Tree's shadow, he burned it off a lifetime ago. You should ask him. Trade secrets."

More fucking trees, bark beetle take them all. Margo decides that it is entirely possible to overdose on cryptic utterances.

"Cole, please..." She isn't sure what she is trying to ask. The surfaces of her mind feel slippery, the words scattering away without finding purchase. All right. One foot in front of the other. When it doubt, break it down into manageable chunks. "Can you tell me how Amund's ritual worked? What did we actually do? No, no... wait. How did we do it?"

The spirit fidgets. "You returned it to its purpose. Like..." He drums the fingers of his free hand on his knee, swaying slightly to the rhythm of his thoughts. "Like a song. A melody, when it's just on the tip of your tongue but it keeps slipping away."

Margo scrunches up her face in muddled frustration. "Cole, I still..."

"I want to explain better, but words are hard. You have to listen between them. Singing into being. Like waves. Blackwall sings low, deep in his chest — chantry bells, traveling far, guiding the weary wanderer back to the village. The Nightingale sings rich and smooth — silver syllables, sharp and sweet. They could sing together — same, but different, it becomes more ."

"Oh!" The sudden insight breaks through her fog of terrified confusion. "Resonance! You're talking about resonance!"

Cole nods emphatically and squeezes her hand. "Yes, like that. We are... like notes. Like when Maryden sings slow songs that taste of tears because Krem asked her. Each note just itself, clear quartz crystal. Like that. It's different now. Before, it all rang together."

Margo's heart rate picks up, the excitement of understanding briefly overshadowing the dull static of residual anxiety — or perhaps simply beating in time with it. It doesn't sound like the spirit means this simply as a metaphor. We are like notes. Well, then. Here's to taking everything literally. "Are you saying that spirits are vibrations? Like a sound wave, but self-aware?" She frowns. "Wait a second, what do you mean, 'Before, it all rang together''? Before what ?"

"Before the Veil. It sings the world apart."

Right. Solas had mentioned to her that the Veil is a type of vibration that keeps the Fade away from the Waking world. And blood magic interferes with this vibration. She frowns. It doesn't quite add up, unless this is a problem of translation or false cognates. Vibration, after all, is a mechanical phenomenon. Margo forces her hand back into her lap. She has taken up the questionable tic of tugging at her earlobe to assist her thinking, an operation that her body's rather sensitive ears do not appreciate in the slightest. Her knowledge of more complex physics is, at best, second-hand — so no point in trying to parachute it in in some laughable attempt to explain the unexplainable. It's the vibrations, man . Right. She has a specific skill set. Might as well play up to her strengths. "Cole, from a spirit's perspective, how does the Veil do that? How does it keep you apart from the Waking?"

"It doesn't always. I'm here. But only a little bit. It is hard to cross and not forget. This side is heavy and slow — it sings otherwise. I had forgotten what I was, too, but a friend reminded me."

So, more a problem of interference, then?

"Are emotions — and memories — notes, too?" She deliberately refrains from calling them "frequencies" — let alone, "energies" — opting for Cole's idiom instead. Across the universe, some tarot-wielding, crystal-wearing New Ager with a professional name like Great Magus Thunderclap is probably shaking his astral projection's fist in mute frustration right about now. Right, Thunderclap. Close, but no cigar. Margo forces her thoughts back on a more reasonable trajectory. "Cole, is this how you do what you do? You quite literally 'tune in'?"

Cole shrugs. "Yes?"

At least the shock has receded — her mind is too occupied with making sense of the new model, like a puppy absorbed by the glorious task of destroying a designer shoe in snarling abandon.

Ok. All right. She can work with this. "So then... Let's see. Let's take an abomination. Could we describe it as the spirit's note and the mortal's note brought together in some way?" Margo chews on the inside of her cheek. Or is the spirit using the enfleshed being as a medium — as both instrument and milieu? Does its "note" change? Is that what corruption is?

"There are many kinds. Most are wrong . Discordant, distended, dissolving each other. The spirit forgets its song, becomes other than it was. Or sometimes, it's the soul that forgets." Cole pauses, apparently in search of a better analogy. "Like when Sera and The Iron Bull are very drunk and sing together."

Margo blinks in consternation. Cole gives her an earnest, expectant look, very clearly pleased with the explanatory potential of this comparison.

A snicker bubbles to the surface. Before long, it turns into chortling. The chortling turns into giggling. And then the giggling mutates into a graceless, hiccuppy fit of hilarity, as if a dam broke and all the night's horrors are spilling out in helpless, hysterical laughter. Every time she tries to stop, the image of a piss-drunk Qunari and an even more drunken elven archer bellowing at the top of their lungs in ear-splitting cacophony sends her into another round of horrid cackles — it doesn't help that, for whatever reason, her brain decides that the performance is an acapella version of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky."

Cole waits patiently for her to run out of steam.

"Sorry..." Margo gasps. "Not... funny... can't..."

"It's all right. You want to ask me about Imshael."

Well. That helps with the hysterics, so there is that.

She takes a deep breath. Releases it. Takes another one, just to be on the safe side. "You said that there are different kinds of abominations. Is what Imshael trying to achieve with me also in that category?"

Cole turns to the fire, his expression concealed in the shadows cast by his hat. "You already know the answer to that. That isn't what you want to know."

Margo is perfectly certain that the spirit could simply answer her question without forcing her to utter it — but apparently he is in the business of freeing up some space under the long-suffering rug. "Why me ?" she asks after a pause.

Cole huddles around himself, sharp shoulder blades sliding beneath the thin leathers — an oddly avian atavism that conjures the image of absent wings. He sits in quiet, sullen pondering — every bit the ruffled sparrow... or downcast angel. "He heard you sing. So many notes, knitting together. Like before. You are very loud once one knows how to listen."

Margo's hands tremble as she brings them to her face, trying to rub some sensation back into her skin. "Because of the draught I drank."

"Not just that. It was there all along — one just need to listen for the right note. Spun, strung so tightly they don't see the weave, they walk unknowing. Where did they all go, I wonder ." He pauses. "You too are Many. A scattered sort of thing."

Oh Void on a stick... Margo stills, as if the enormity of Cole's pronouncement might just lumber on by and leave her unnoticed and unscathed. Instead, it mills around, breathing down her neck and raising the hairs on her nape. She swallows around a lump in her throat. Amund had asked her where the spirits of her world had gone. Without Cole, it would never have occurred to her to connect the dots. Baba's strange, eclectic spiritual poaching, with its archaic attachments to pre-Christian animism and its belief in multiple souls. The old woman's altar, populated by saints, and gods, and communist leaders — and an assortment of wooden idols Margo never learned to interpret. Lélek and íz . And in some of her world's religious traditions, more than just two. Spirits and vibrations. Emotions and memories. Great Magus Thunderclap. She doesn't know whether she wants to laugh, or cry, or scream — or all three, in no particular order. She just chided herself for mistaking this world's descriptions for a figure of speech — the thought of extending her own world's forgotten voices the same courtesy had never crossed her mind.

"It is easy not to notice what's always there," Cole offers gently.

"Cole, you're going to have to spell this out for me. You are saying that my world is... Are you saying that we absorbed our spirits?"

A world of oblivious abominations.

Cole shrugs. "I can't answer that. I only know one you."

Margo hugs her knees to her chest, rests her forehead on her folded arms, shuts her eyes, and tries to take as little space as is physically possible. "I think I need a sabbatical," she murmurs bleakly.

"You need to sleep. If you would like, I will stay. You won't have to dream."

Margo simply nods in tired acquiescence. She'll take dreamless sleep when it's offered.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by questionable sound metaphors._

 _Next up: A piece of writing you should not be reading at work._


	74. Chapter 74: For We Are Many

_In which things get complicated (warning, this chapter is NSFW)_

* * *

 _Kraaaa!_

Margo stirs, huddles deeper into the cocoon of warmth, and tries to cover her ears against the intrusive noise.

 _Krrrraaawww!_ Loud, insistent, and thoroughly pleased with itself.

She opens one eye. The raven is perched on a nearby stony cairn, a smear of inky black against the dawnlit sky. It turns its head to the side, either to observe her or to show off its regal profile — Margo isn't sure which. Satisfied with the results, the bird jumps down from its perch, takes a few preparatory hops, and launches off with a parting caw.

"Sleep well?"

Margo jerks upright, like Count Dracula out of a coffin. She is wrapped in a blanket, a thin bedroll beneath her. She doesn't remember setting up a bed — let alone falling asleep.

Solas is crouching by a freshly restacked fire. In front of him, a compact travel pot of steaming liquid rests on a flat boulder. Whether he used the fire to boil the pot's contents or cut some corners with magic, the smell that wafts over is unmistakably tea-like — a tannic reminder of how unpleasantly parched she is. The inside of her mouth feels like it's been dusted with a generous helping of talc.

"Is that for me?" Margo asks hopefully.

"It is. Forgive me if I do not join you." The elf's tone sounds clipped.

"I'll be right back." She gets up, arms herself with her rudimentary toiletries and waterskin, and wanders off towards the bushes. Hopefully, the previous night's lupine visitor won't be making a strategic appearance.

When Margo returns, Solas hands her a clay cup. She accepts it with a grateful smile and inhales deeply before settling back on the bedroll. A local equivalent of a rather earthy pu-erh, judging by the smell.

"Courtesy of Lady Trevelyan," Solas comments before she has a chance to ask the obvious question. "The Herald of Andraste appears to be under the impression that all manner of trouble can be easily remedied with this concoction. When you did not return to camp last night, she became concerned over your absence."

Margo blows on the liquid and takes a tentative sip. It's been rather generously sweetened. She looks around. Solas's traveling gear is propped against a nearby boulder, but there are no traces of either Amund or the spirit. "Did you take over from Cole?"

"I offered to relieve him," Solas confirms neutrally. "Under your Avvar friend's rather disapproving glare, I should add, but Cole kindly intervened on my behalf." His tone is bone dry, with a pinch of irony. Margo examines him carefully. Shoulders rigid, spine too straight, each movement meticulously, painstakingly intentional. The skin around his eyes is pinched tight — and, judging by the way the muscles of his jaw move, Solas is clenching his teeth like there is no tomorrow.

"Want to tell me what has you seething?" she asks lightly.

It jolts him into looking at her point-blank, at which stage Margo realizes that he had been studiously avoiding eye contact.

His expression grows thunderous. "I..." He turns away, his profile incongruously severe in the soft pink light. "I do not care to see someone I... Someone whose welfare concerns me be used so cynically and with so little regard for consequences. All the more so when done under the guise of tutelage. An apprentice is not some interesting pebble, to pick up haphazardly and pocket without a second thought. Such relationships come with responsibilities," he adds tersely.

Well. If she ever doubted whether Amund's animosity was reciprocated, the question has been firmly put to rest.

"Amund does have a bit of a sink-or-swim approach, but he is far from irresponsible." It comes out sounding defensive. "He didn't force my hand. He asked me if I wished to help, and I said I did."

"And at what cost?" All semblance of composure evaporates. "Let us disregard, for a moment, the problem of your rather regular 'visitor' and what he might want with you — and focus simply on the manner of the Avvar's magic."

Margo takes a fortifying sip of tea. An argument with the mercurial elf wasn't exactly at the top of her list of desirable ways to start the day, but she supposes the laundry would have needed airing eventually. Might as well roll up her sleeves and go a-hanging. She rubs her forehead, trying to get her thoughts into a semblance of orderly conduct. "Solas... I'm not a child, as well you know. Everything has a price. Every decision a sacrifice — one of the first things you said to me, as I recall." She shrugs. "I thought you might appreciate that we helped Constancy. You do seem to care a great deal about spirits and their well-being."

His eyes flash with some undecipherable emotion. "Oh, I care deeply about many things, _lethallan_." His tone climbs in pitch. "One of which happens..." He stares at her with a familiar self-negating expression, heat and ice rolled into one spectacular mess of barely repressed and completely contradictory impulses. "No matter. What you did..." He interrupts himself again with a shake of his head. When he continues, his tone is calmer, but with a frosty bite to it. "Cole told me of your manipulations. What you did is remarkable. And irresponsibly foolish!"

Margo bristles, mostly on the absentee Avvar's behalf. "The refugees aren't Amund's people, Solas, and still, he did what he could to help them. Even when it wasn't exactly a cake walk for him, from what I could tell. And yes, I wanted to assist — since it turned out to be in the bag of tricks I inherited during my translocation into your world. I didn't see too many others volunteering."

"Yes! Ever eager to charge headfirst into the fray, without an inkling of understanding of what you are dealing with, and not a thought spared for the potential consequences! Tell me, has this wonderful tactic served you well so far? It must, if it has become ingrained with the force of an unbreakable habit!"

So this is how it's going to play out, is it? The mug of tea is beginning to burn her hands, but the discomfort barely registers. "If you mean acting first and agonizing over the unexpected results later, then I might have met someone else by that description." Margo takes a breath. "When I asked you to restore Maile's memories, you weren't exactly reticent to experiment. And then there was the unexpected fallout from stumbling around on the Fade side of Haven. As I recall, I had a partner in foolhardiness on both occasions — so, yes, kettle, fancy meeting you here. Always a pleasure."

Solas stares at her in stunned shock, as if she physically slapped him. Margo glares right back.

"Have you considered," he enunciates carefully, "what would have happened if the memory you gave away had been _wrong_? If you had come up short?"

How much has Cole told him, exactly? She's going to have a nice little sit-down with the spirit, and they will go over important milestones — such as the moral bankruptcy of tattling and the necessity of personal hygiene. It's a thankless task, but someone's gotta do it.

She shrugs. "I don't think getting lost in the garden of hypotheticals is a particularly productive exercise. What's done is done, and it turned out fine in the end." Not her soundest argument, but fuck it.

"And what if you had corrupted the spirit further? Had you considered _that_?"

Oh. Her forearms break out in unpleasant goosebumps. It's not as if such an outcome is entirely outside of the realm of possibilities, in light of what Cole explained — and considering how much she struggled with finding the right memory. She can barely tune a guitar — thinking that she could tweak a _spirit's_ expression... A tiny misstep, and... "I'm pretty sure Amund _was_ controlling the process. I don't think he would have allowed for such a thing to happen." How's that for a hopeful platitude.

"Are you so certain? How much do you truly know about Avvar magic, beyond what might appear familiar from your own world?" Solas's jaw tightens. "I personally do not share your confidence in your mentor's infallibility. He did leave you unforgivably vulnerable to the Forbidden One — and not for ignorance of its interest in you. If not for accidental _luck..._ " He trails off, throwing up his hand in a gesture of disgusted dismissal, and returns to the task of staring off into the middle distance.

Margo exhales. Her heart beats in her throat, fast and painful, treacherous pressure building behind her eyelids and pinching her sinuses. He isn't _wrong_ , per se. But she is too raw for this shit, and not nearly caffeinated enough. If they continue on this track, they're going to strangle each other. She should try to de-escalate before one of them does something regretful.

"You want to talk about Imshael?" There is a distinct challenge in her voice. So much for de-escalating.

Solas gets up abruptly and stalks over. He plants himself in her personal space, using every bit of his height advantage to loom disapprovingly. The general impression is spoiled somewhat by the fact that he folds himself into a lopsided cross-legged position, crowded by the circle of stones that frame the fire. Also by the fact that he recoils slightly when Margo raises her teacup in instinctive self-defense.

They glare at each other.

"What I want, _fenor_..." he begins, his tone unsettlingly quiet. The rest of the sentence gets stuck somewhere along the way. His eyes search her face for some unutterable answer, before darting to her mouth. This close, she can hear his breath, shallow and too fast.

Time slows.

Very cautiously, as if the tea had suddenly morphed into nitroglycerin, Margo sets down her cup. The temptation to pour its contents over his head is a little too enticing. Solas follows the movement with his gaze, confusion momentarily breaking through the crust of frosty ire.

Margo purses her lips. "There. I laid down my weapons. Consider this a diplomatic overture."

The elf stares at her with such profound, frustrated consternation that Margo finds herself trying to smother an impending fit of cackles.

That's it. She's losing it. _Coffee's on the stove. See you next year. —Your mind._

"You find this amusing," he observes caustically.

"Not especially, to be honest. Coping mechanism. I had a rough night."

He does not seem placated by this announcement in the slightest. "Tell me what the Forbidden One offered you."

On a better day, the elf's insistence on skirting around the cosmic shitgibbon's moniker would draw her attention, but this is not that day. Margo narrows her eyes in a disapproving squint. Bastard. She has no doubt whatsoever that Cole already spilled the beans, and then added some barbecue sauce as a bonus. What is this, then? A power play? Splendid. He wants to tango, she'll bloody well tango. She squares her shoulders, matching his rigid stance. "How about this. I will trade you. Why does Imshael refer to you as 'wolf'?"

Something odd happens to Solas's face. His expression kaleidoscopes through a series of convoluted emotions — shock, fury, and, briefly, something that looks suspiciously like horror — until, finally, it settles into a dangerous sort of stillness. "Oh, he does, does he?"

Margo nods. No need to introduce the fact that Baba does as well until she has confirmation that Cole shared his thoughts on that subject too.

"Do you intend to answer my question?" Solas asks after an uncomfortable pause.

"Do you?"

His lips pinch in unmistakable vexation. "I expect my query to be rather more immediately pressing."

Margo suppresses a snort. Right. _I asked you first._ They might as well cut to the chase and start trading playground barbs. She makes a face. "I have a strong suspicion that you know already."

His eyes narrow. "Then why suggest an exchange? Would such an offer not be blatantly disingenuous?" He pauses. "Or do you, perhaps, already have the answer that _you_ seek?"

Beneath the anger, she catches a flash of something else. Unease? Doubt?

Margo freezes, her breath catching in her throat.. Could it be that she jumped to erroneous conclusions too fast? Perhaps Cole didn't, in fact, tattle. Or tattled less than she thought. And if so, then she made not one, but two terribly ungenerous attributions, mistaking genuine concern, however miserably conveyed, for power games. But that's the kicker, isn't it. She doesn't _know_. Not for sure. Not when the universe keeps changing the rules.

Right. Intellectual honesty. Clearly not to be confused with full disclosure, but, for better or for worse, it is the approach she adapted with the elf from the very beginning. Without it, the little that remains of her system of coordinates disintegrates for good, and from there it's turtles all the way down.

Not a bridge she is ready to burn.

Margo hesitates. Then, at length, gathering whatever dregs remain of her courage, she shakes her head. "I don't," she says. "But Cole recommended that we should... trade."

" _Trade._ " For a second, Solas looks profoundly scandalized. And then, as if something within him breaks and rearranges, his expression thaws, and in the next moment, he is chuckling soundlessly, his shoulders shaking with barely contained mirth. Margo's heart pinches. She brandishes a mental fist at the treacherous organ — in that instant, he is utterly, breathtakingly lovely.

Oh, _fuck_ no. Focus.

She gathers her wits — or whatever passes for them these days. "You find this amusing," she parrots back in a decent rendition of his earlier aggravation.

"Yes! For lack of a better response!" Then, unexpectedly, Solas redirects his gaze to his hands. The tips of his ears take on a distinctly pink hue. "I..." Another chuckle, rimmed with a sad sort of incredulity. He sits in silence for a few long heartbeats, ruminating. "I met a friendly spirit who observed the dreams of village girls as love first blossomed in their adolescence." Margo blinks at this wild non sequitur, but the elf forges on. "With subtlety, she steered them all to village boys with gentle hearts, who would return their love with gentle kindness." His lips curl in a smile. "The Matchmaker, so I called her. That small village never knew its luck."

The heartbreaking wistfulness is insidiously communicative, but Margo forces herself to escape the lure of its shimmering glow. Amund's derisive accusation is lodged firmly somewhere in the back of her mind, a sharp fishbone that perforates the verbal enchantment of what she has begun to think of as Solas's Fade prosody. "I was indeed a village girl once, Solas, but at this point you and I are both far from adolescence. Or first loves, for that matter." She has a horrible suspicion she knows what he's driving at, of course. Cole has apparently taken on the questionable role of Cupid.

He looks up. Their gazes snag — the infinite hallway between two mirrors. Resonance, unmerciful and unspecified deity help her. And then Solas sighs, and his shoulders slump. "Yes. I fear that we are far beyond my old friend's capacity to intervene. At best, a task to draw a spirit of Compassion — if any at all."

It's not the first time that the elf tries to slam on the brakes — but this instantiation feels markedly different. A true point of bifurcation — a door wide open in both direction, and not merely ajar at random times and closed at others. He sits, rigid and grimly resolute, as if steeling himself against an inevitable blow.

It is Margo's turn to stare intently at her hands. The silence between them swells. "I wouldn't be so categorical," she says finally. The rest comes out as barely a whisper. "The sort of thing your friend helped facilitate can take more than one form."

 _For we are Many._

In the distance, a bird greets the rising sun with a rolling trill. A northern wind picks up, sweeping the stone-littered plateau and buffeting the strange cairns with whispering dust. She shivers. Time slows, pulses to the heavy thuds of her heartbeat.

"What did the Forbidden One offer you?" Solas asks, his voice sinking deeper, broken on some hidden underwater reef.

Margo doesn't look up. "To go home," she states simply.

She waits. Flames crackle over logs. At the edges of the clifftop, life scurries and fusses, bustling and oblivious.

"An impossible offer to refuse." Heat beneath the ice.

"An impossible offer to accept."

She glances up just in time. His movements are lightning-fast, inhuman. For a split second — and before his lips find hers — his expression registers surprise, as if his body has seceded and is now resorting to guerilla tactics designed to sabotage whatever best intentions might have remained. His hands tangle in her hair. And then it's lips and teeth — on her mouth, on her jaw, on her throat, and then down, a sharp bite at the crook of her neck — she gasps — the hot glide of tongue in the sensitive hollow above her clavicle. She shudders with a startled sound.

Hands find purchase, and down and down they go, onto the stony ground. She barely registers the prickle of pebbles against her back before he rolls them both onto a softer surface. Her body seems to have developed a mind of its own, and she searches, frantic, for skin heretofore untouched.

"May I?" A ragged whisper.

She trails kisses along his jaw, and he shudders, a whole-body tremor. He tastes of dust and dawn and ozone. "You may." The wryness is skin-deep.

It's messy. He lifts her hips, one elbow hooked below her thigh, his other hand fumbling at whatever keeps her trousers in place. Clothes shifted out of the way just enough to grant access. Then, finally, a jolt, too cool against feverish skin. Hands always oddly cold, except the one time, in the summer heat of her dreamworld. A vague, half-formed thought fleets across her mind — something about ravens, and exposed rocky plateaus, and spirits, and how angry fucking is a bad idea, but then his fingers find their intended destination, and her capacity to reflect flies out the window, ravens and reservations along with it. She bites his shoulder, stifling a low moan.

Solas stills with a visible effort of will — to Margo's inarticulate but no less heartfelt protest — then he lifts up on one elbow, and peers down at her, desire, exasperation, a smidge of humor — and something else — mixed in chaotic contradiction. She watches his lips quirk. "As I recall, you asked me once whether I was open to taking directions." His voice is low, strained around the edges. He brings their faces close. Too much eye contact for two people long past the stage of adolescent pining. "Well? I am all ears."

Her own slightly breathless laughter sends little jolts of electricity down her legs. "You're managing just fine."

"Am I, now?" He repositions his hand for a better angle, then he slowly rolls his thumb across familiar nerve endings — another accident of evolutionary convergence. Margo sucks in a breath. Two more fingers venture south in an exploratory but excruciatingly insufficient caress. His appreciative little "hmm" at the easy glide sends a jolt of raw heat through her.

A slow, unresolved back and forth, again and again, settling into a rhythm. Not nearly enough.

"Any specific requests?" A taunt, but his voice is rough, breath coming hard and fast.

He's going to make her say it, isn't he? She somehow manages a sarcastic smirk. "You've got the general idea. Steady as she goe-" The rest is lost. Without prior warning, he slides his fingers deep. Margo isn't entirely sure whether the shaky moan is his, or hers, or shared — but her hips buck in needy echo.

His chuckle wraps around her, warm and velvety. "Was that a _nautical_ metaphor, fenor?" Margo mutes the elf's self-satisfied amusement with a nip at his lower lip, and then he is kissing her with deliberate slowness, tongues twisting in eerie contrast to the steadily rising tempo of his fingers.

Her new incarnations' wants are subtly, unsettlingly surprising, but the elf turns out to be an attentive reader, and the guesswork is soon replaced with slightly cheeky confidence. Questionable metaphors notwithstanding, the sweet ache builds, too fast, with a razor-sharp edge beneath the pleasure. He breaks the kiss, nuzzles her head to the side to bring his lips in line with her ear. " _There_. Like that?"

The capacity to form words is gone. Another moan, somewhere between acknowledgment and complaint.

An impatient, hungry little noise escapes him, and he obliges her inarticulate request. The building pressure turns into liquid fire. Her entire body tenses, balanced precariously on the brink.

"Vhenan..." Solas's voice hitches on the word — a prayer, or a demand, or an incantation, or all three. Her hips jerk, and then she is hurtling past the point of no return with a gasp shaped like his name. The world falls away — her ears fill with fuzzy static, an involuntary spasm forcing her eyelids shut.

He guides her through the climax, chasing its tapering waves with clever fingers. Some vast, unutterable heartbreak unfurls in the afterglow, but he gathers her close before it takes root, soothing her through the last tremors of her pleasure, the lilt of Elvhen words left without translation, whispered across her skin.

When Margo finally manages to peel her eyes open, she catches Solas's gaze on her. For a precious few seconds — and for the first time since she's known him — his expression is starkly uncomplicated.

She reaches for him, but he intercepts her hand, pressing a kiss into her palm. "I fear this small window of privacy will not last much longer." He sounds regretful — but also not entirely convinced.

"At least, let me return the favor." A bit of a plea, really, her breath still coming in short, ragged bursts.

Solas seems to vacillate, pulled in orthogonal directions, but eventually shakes his head. He manages a completely unlikely combination of cheekiness and self-deprecation. "I am far too greedy not to wish to enjoy your company rather more... thoroughly than what we would manage at present."

Margo lets her hand trail down his abdomen, then lower. Her explorations lend predictable results and an accusatory look. "Are you quite certain?" she smirks. "You seem to be of two minds on this topic."

His eyes are dark, the odd amethyst tint at their center swallowed by expanded pupils — far too large to ever pass for human. "Either you have a cruel streak, fenor, or you are of the opinion that I am some unfeeling dwarven apparatus. May I accept your generous offer at a later date?"

"So that you may accrue dividends for time elapsed? Fine." Margo purses her lips to hide the smile, and she retrieves her hand to more neutral locations. "Your loss."

"Debatable."

She cocks an eyebrow. "You're not what one might call humble, are you?"

Solas makes a choked sound at the back of his throat — and his ears turn pink — but he collects himself quickly. "Oh, I would certainly not presume. I simply meant that I can see the benefit of... 'accruing dividends,' as you so delicately put it." His smile turns sly. "Besides, I would much rather let you be the judge of whether the lack of humility is warranted."

Not a humble bone in his body. Not a one. Margo attempts to fold her expression into something that approximates polite interest. "Does the counter reset at predetermined intervals? Are we talking asymptotic accumulation, or a 'use it or lose it' scenario?"

The elf's wry expression turns into sudden searing heat. "Is that a warning, ma'nas? Or are you asking me whether I do in fact plan to 'collect' on your offer?"

At this point, Margo is chortling outright. "It was a perfectly innocent question about the hermeneutics of time's assumed linearity. But I see where your mind went."

He shuts his eyes briefly, allowing the moment to pass. "You _do_ have a cruel streak."

Margo pulls the blanket over both of them, fighting mild disappointment and the sore and tender emotional mess it overlays. "Considering you are escalating your distraction tactics, it's a logical query."

A little frown creases his brow. "What do you mean, fenor?"

She chuckles. Right. What big ears you have, dear grandma. "You never _did_ answer my question. About wolves. That was rather unsportsmanlike of you, by the way. I did answer yours, after all."

"Ah." The silence is not altogether comfortable. "Should I assume that we are in the business of trading after all?"

Sudden exhaustion rolls over her, threatening to drag her beneath its murky surface. Margo forces a smile, but it has a bittersweet aftertaste. "Weren't my nautical metaphors vastly preferable to these economic ones?"

The needling earns her a surprised chortle, and the odd tension between them eases a fraction. The feeling puts her in mind of a slightly dislocated joint settling back into place but leaving a soreness behind. Solas rather decisively tugs her underwear and trousers into their original position, then encircles her waist, rolls her on top, and tucks her head under his chin. She allows herself to relax against him, her hand finding its way beneath his tunic, and she lets her fingertips trail aimless patterns over his chest, tracing the outlines of lean muscles and old faded scars.

She doesn't think he will answer. And then, with a shuddering sigh and lead in his voice, he whispers his response into her hair.

"There are old magics, lost to time and Chantry-led eradication." A hesitation. "Such is the nature of the Dreaming that more than a single form is possible."

Huh. Is he saying that he can shape-shift? Sneaky elf seems to be choosing his words rather carefully — it's not lost on Margo that he failed to specify whom the active agent might be in his statement. Old magics, yes, but wielded by _whom_? The easy inference is something like what the locals call an apostate, a mage outside the Circle, unfettered by whatever regulations they might impose. But on the other hand... Their previous conversations about the Fade as an ever-changing amalgam of infinitely multiplied perspectives might offer a different interpretation. Because if the Fade adjusts to the perception of the seer, then might it work in the other direction as well? If you could actively change the output, would the input change as well? She has gotten so used to Imshael's rotating roster of masks that it never occurred to her to interrogate the mechanism underlying the demon's ability to wear them. Could it be that the disguises are less strategic — and more refractory — than she originally thought? The cosmic shitgibbon is a creature of the Fade, and so there is a decent chance that his talents are shared by some of his other compatriots. And there is the matter of Cole and the shape he decided on when he came through...

Margo lifts her head to see Solas's expression.

"Tell me this, at least. During your visit to my..." She clears her throat. "Chicken hut. I guessed correctly, didn't I? You _are_ a spirit, originally."

" _That_ , fenor, is a separate question." Solas's quiet smile softens the evasion. His hands trail down her back, and then he cups her ass and pulls her higher, managing to add a rather opportunistic little squeeze in the process. He lifts up a bit and, somewhat incongruously, rubs the tip of his nose against hers.

Margo rearranges herself into a more comfortable position and rests her cheek on his shoulder. She doesn't pry further — timeless wisdom about knowing when to fold, and all that. Solas's hinted explanation is perfectly reasonable — except for one problem. Imshael _insists_ on the wolf moniker. As does Baba. Is shapeshifting so significant in Thedas that it would stand in a synecdochal relationship to one's identity?

Oh, Void in a sack, let this _not_ be a werewolf thing. Beats demonic chickens, but only barely.

Fine. There is more than one way to skin a cat. What she needs is a decent library. And from there, it's a matter of casting her nets wide: wolves as symbols in local heraldry, lupine lore in cross-cultural perspective, magics explicitly condemned by Chantry teachings, especially ones that deal with transmogrification. And, all right. Werewolf things. She'll need a workaround with the Chantry censorship, but Dorian seems more than willing to stick it to the southerners, so he might be a good resource.

Of course, she supposes there is also the alternative "trade route."

As long as she has this problem to set her mind upon, she doesn't have to think about the implications of Cole's revelations. Or about the fact that Imshael will probably be back trying to sell more interplanar bridges. Or the terrifying likelihood that the demon will dispense with the charade of exchange once he runs out of patience and simply take what he wants by force.

Margo suppresses a shudder and sets her thoughts on less awful horizons. More relevantly to the immediate problem, it's an odd dance she's settling into with the elf. Because it begs the question of not only _what_ Solas is hiding, but _why._ If he is a spirit as she suspects, why hide the fact? With Cole in their ranks, it would not be so farfetched to share such a secret with a select few. Unless he trusts her a lot less than she has flattered herself into believing. The fact that he is hiding something is plain as day — infatuation or not, her mind has by now latched on to the puzzle with the ferocity of a pissed-off rottweiler. She warned him that she would not let this go — so either Solas's opinion of her intelligence is insultingly low, or he is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs deliberately.

But leading _where_?

A sudden wave of anxiety washes over her. Assuming her spirit hypothesis is correct, Cole, it would appear, knew right away what she is — even before she did. Consider Exhibit A. Cole said something the first time they met — something about how she reminded him of himself, but _before._ Before what? The only reference point the spirit uses consistently is the creation of the Veil. Which would make Cole ancient, boyish grubbiness notwithstanding. It would also mean that something about how she appears to Cole is similar to what he was like in the past. But similar in what ways? Ok, dead end for now. Consider Exhibit B. Imshael seems rather familiar with Solas — to the point that the demon was able to fake him rather convincingly the first time he visited. Down to the Fade prosody. It is reasonable to assume that Imshael is himself rather long in the tooth. Which leaves her with the obvious question: _if_ Solas is a spirit, how old is he, exactly? And a spirit of what?

And then there's the real kicker. Has Solas known all along about her nature, even before she did — and, by extension, about the nature of her world — and not let on? Her stomach drops with the sudden axial shift of her heretofore unquestioned certainties.

Is their apparent intimacy a _ruse_?

Slow, steady breaths. A descent into paranoia isn't going to do her any favors. Besides, she doesn't think some things can be faked. Like that expression she caught on his features earlier before it morphed into cheeky smugness — that naked sense of wonder.

Trading. The entire concept presupposes a mutually beneficial exchange, ideally between more or less equally matched partners — the notion that they each might want _something_ is itself quite telling. Why is he pushing so hard to learn of her interactions with the cosmic asshole? And about the events at Redcliffe for that matter. He knows everything Dorian knows — so what more does he think she might add?

There is, of course, the rather unflattering fact that their physical encounters seem to escalate in direct correlation with Imshael's interventions... Imshael, in fact, has made this symmetry explicit on more than one occasion. Is Solas's willingness to trade simply fear that she might accept the demonic fowl's indecent proposal? And, if so, then is this personal concern born of whatever feelings he might harbor, or something else entirely? Or both that and some other invisible variable? Something she is missing...

One way or another, she will have to play her trade tokens carefully. _Quid pro quo, Clarice._

Here's to hoping the elf's gastronomic tastes are not _that_ adventurous.

"Forgive me for earlier, ma'nas." A quiet, heartbroken whisper that startles her out of her grim thoughts. "My behavior was..." She feels Solas's throat work around the bitter remainder of the sentence. "Ghastly in its selfishness. But the thought of... I would not lose you if I can help it. Especially not to the Forbidden One."

Sudden warm and fuzzies aside, Margo doesn't get the chance to point out that if he plans to turn this into a competition with Imshael, he can very well stuff it. The quality of the light changes as a shadow darts overhead with a loud _kraaa!_ The caw is the corvid version of shocked indignation.

"Ah. It is best that we depart," Solas says.

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by one very scandalized raven.

Next up: Returns, preparations, world-historical events.

[Ok! A quick reader announcement. We are slowly approaching the point where my nest-egg of writing reaches its bottom. I still have a volley of pre-written chapters to post, but soon(ish) I'll be entering totally new, yet unwritten territory. I've loved hearing from those of you who have left me a note or a review - thank you for your labor of composing your thoughts, and if I owe you a response ping me. I know we don't all have the spoons to engage back, and that's totally fine, but for those of you who have bothered, thank you thank you, you are the best. And for those of you who maybe feel shy about it, this would be a really good (and to me super helpful) time to tell me if there are subplots/side arcs/character studies or anything else you'd love to see. As I said, I have a nest-egg of writing, but this is a sprawling story, and some threads are left hanging as my interests jump around. Reach out! Tell me who you want to know more about! Enable me, by all means ;)]


	75. Chapter 75: Bitter Harvests

_Walks of shame, economic detours, and conversations about history._

 **Content warning** : The very last section of this chapter has some pretty difficult war-related themes (specifically ethnic cleansing). It's all oblique references in a conversation (nothing graphic or gratuitously explicit), but please be advised that there's a very abrupt shift in tone and some heavy stuff.

* * *

They pack quickly. Solas meets Margo's suggestion for a detour through the refugee settlement with an affable offer of company. An offer that really isn't one, judging by his body language if not the tone — more of a nonnegotiable statement of intent. She sighs, swings her pack onto her shoulders, raises her chin a little higher, and sets off, the elf on her heels. She is a grown woman. What she does — and who she does it with — is no one's business. There are more pressing matters to attend to than the questionable task of embroidering the proverbial scarlet letter.

Midway through their walk of shame — or, really, their scramble-and-occasionally-barely-controlled-slide of shame that comprises the descent from the escarpment — Solas brings them to a halt with a hand on Margo's shoulder and gently pushes her to turn around and face him. "Fenor... I can be very discreet, if that is your concern."

Margo winces. Is she really being that transparent? His tone is gentle, but with some other, more complex emotion lurking at the edges. She glances up and gives her mental train one final, well-placed kick. She really is being ridiculous about this. "I know we're not doing anything wrong. It's not that."

Solas makes a point of holding her gaze. "Nor anything particularly remarkable. Why should anyone fret over how a humble apostate and a rank-and-file alchemist occupy themselves in their scant spare time?"

Margo chuckles a bit darkly, gives the hand resting on her shoulder a quick squeeze, and wordlessly turns to resume their progress. Why indeed — aside from the fact that, as far at Torquemada is concerned, everything you say, do, or think in the emotionally messy synapses of your limbic brain will be used against you, and with extreme prejudice. And then there is the other matter. Solas is a master of doublespeak. Is this another hint, another crumb dropped on the trail? Because, on the one hand, he is absolutely right — she is, from the perspective of the Great Inquisitorial Machinery, not much more than a rank-and-file alchemist apprentice occasionally moonlighting as a spy. If you ignore the alien bit. And she supposes that, from this same perspective, Solas is indeed simply a humble apostate. But is he an apostate to something else as she is an alchemist to her alien status and to whatever inadvertent talents got smuggled into this world along with whatever her íz is? Because there is still the puzzle of Solas's courtly manner, of his seemingly encyclopedic knowledge, of his intellectual acuity. Of his affinity and familiarity with spirits. Of the whole "wolf" thing. And of the fact that Evie's Glowing Hand of Doom, to plagiarize Varric, only responds to the aforementioned humble apostate's ministrations. What had Solas said at the trial? "No magic like I have ever seen," or something like it. How very curious — and how very lucky — that he can modulate it, its alleged novelty notwithstanding.

At the base of the cliff, the footpath levels off and widens into something approximating a crude road. They fall into step next to each other. Well. Enough wallowing. And speaking of writerly dwarves and scarlet letters... Margo casts a sly glance at the elf. He looks perfectly unsuspecting. Excellent. "See, it's all well and good in principle, but when you find out that Varric's latest romance serial features you as the lead and involves such powerful action verbs as 'heaving' and 'throbbing,' don't say I didn't warn you."

Solas makes a choked sound. Whatever he was expecting, it clearly wasn't that. " Throbbing?"

"Throbbing," Margo confirms grimly. "And if you don't particularly like that, wait until it gets to 'plunging.' There's 'impaling,' too, but I always thought that crosses the line. And don't get me started on 'swords' and 'sheaths.'"

Solas's face cycles through some truly interesting colors, and Margo forges on with a sense of perverse satisfaction. "I must admit I am personally partial to the botanical metaphors. I suppose that's unsurprising." The Rabelaisian romp works its magic, dispelling the overcrowded emotional mess left over from the previous night and compounded by the subsequent early morning. A smirk threatens to break through. She squashes it and blinks innocently. "You know, I wonder whether Varric is the sort of writer who overuses flower analogies."

By this point the elf, bless him, is beginning to look simultaneously red and green, but he somehow manages a chuckle. "Desist, fenor, you have successfully imparted the gravity of the situation. I would rather be spared more... ah... overwrought depictions." And then his expression turns impish. Uh-oh. Margo adopts the mental equivalent of her best fencing stance. They walk in silence for a few heartbeats — either he is formulating the next jab, or he is letting it accrue gravitas. "You do seem remarkably familiar with such literature — and its vocabulary. One of your many research interests, perhaps?"

Margo catches herself on a stumble and orders her ears to cease their inopportune foray into incandescence. Of course he'd go there. "Not as such," she parries, with as much dignity as can be mustered under the circumstances — which isn't very much at all. "See, each historical epoch has its own approach to the 'education of the senses.'" A quick glance at her... What are they to each other, exactly? She shuffles through the deck of unsatisfying labels. Friends with occasional benefits? Intellectual sparring partners? Odd outsiders? Kindred spirits?

And, in the interest of calling a spade a spade... Lovers?

All of these? None of them?

In the meantime, Solas mirrors back her shoddy performance of abstract academic interest — it does absolutely nothing to hide the mischievous glint in his eyes. "If so, then I fear such writing might do more harm than good," he offers. "A recipe for setting expectations and reality on wildly divergent paths. But if it would settle your worries, fenor, I could attempted to impart to Varric the importance of using more... precise language should he decide to incorporate any recognizable actors into his tales."

Margo jettisons her efforts at composure in favor of a good old snort. She should have known he'd turn the tables. "In my experience, writers are a sensitive bunch. Run it by me first — what would you suggest to him?"

Solas lifts one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. "I suppose it would depend on what goal one seeks to achieve. If the aim is educational..." He puts on a show of pondering the question. "Perhaps a more technical cartography bears reiterating, lest those reading such writing become confused at all the allegories?"

"Laudable. However, I don't think Varric's readership would appreciate dry technical descriptions, drágám ." The endearment slips in advance of her ability to cage it safely.

Solas cocks an eyebrow and, after a hesitation, tries the alien word for taste. He rolls the 'r" passably well. "Your native tongue? What does it mean?"

"Similar to your fenor , I suppose."

They walk in companionable silence for a few minutes. The crumbling barbican and the shantytown that clings to its foundation rise at the far end of a fragrant meadow. Some chirping insect, warmed by the morning sun, solos for a while before it is joined by a scattered chorus of others.

"Not a word used lightly," Solas offers suddenly. Surprised out of her thoughts, Margo glances at his face. Whose usage is he referring to? His eyes crinkle in amusement, though it is overlaid with a distracted sort of sadness. "Upon consideration, I would make for an overly gloomy guide to Master Tethras's writely efforts, with too much time spent cautioning against unintended consequences. Perhaps it is best that our dwarven associate shoulders the task as he sees fit."

Margo sighs. Right, right, what big teeth, dear grandma. Still, she finds herself reaching for his hand, and Solas twines his fingers with hers in a smooth, habitual gesture.

"If I didn't know any better, I would come to the conclusion that you are fishing for a compliment," she remarks.

It snaps him out of his wistful spiral. "I certainly do not necessitate verbal accolades, heart." He lifts Margo's wrist to his lips and brushes a kiss against the pulse point. "Quite often confidence is born from little more than careful observation." His smile has a brittle, self-deprecating edge.

The laugh escapes, unbidden — and the weight pressing down on her heart finally dissolves, leaving in its wake a fizzy lightness, a buoyant pressure that swells and sparkles inside her ribcage. A small thing, but she'll take an unkind universe's unearned mercies whenever she finds them. "Tell me, has your world discovered hot air balloons yet? And the unsung merits of ballast?"

"Ma'nas?"

She succumbs to a sudden impulse, leans in, and plants a firm kiss of his cheek. The elf's expression morphs from wry, to puzzled, to pleased, to slightly flustered. He stops, his hand still firmly encircling her wrist, an unspoken question in his eyes. 

"Irrevocably lost in translation, I'm afraid," Margo nods sagely. "We're almost there — do you see that little shed, the one with the drying rack next to it?"

###

Carlissa meets them at the threshold, her skin flushed from the effort of wrestling with a load of laundry submerged in a murky solution of wood-ash lye.

"Good, you came! Tryan's been looking for you, lass, says he's got something to..." The woman's warm smile slips at the sight of the unfamiliar elf, but she quickly fixes the expression in place — a habit that suggests her alienage origins. She considers Solas for a moment and, finally, adds a cordial nod. "Andaran atish'an, brother. Da'Samahl spoke well of you. Kind of you to offer healing. Not many would've bothered — not for frost cough in an old elf." She wipes her hands on her apron — a reluctant gesture, her copper skin blistered and cracked from the caustic soap and the habit of the scrubbing board. "Would you join us for breakfast? Won't be nothing fancy, mind, but the bairns'll be back with some dough and eggs in quarter-of-a-candle, most."

Solas nods formally. "Ma serannas, lethallan. But we would not wish to trouble you or impose ourselves on your hospitality." His eyes dart to the shed, skitter across the drying rack — which still bears a close resemblance to the pile of debris from which it originated — and settle on Carlissa's wash tub. Before his expression regains its patent neutral amiability, Margo catches a brief flash of distaste, quickly curdled into some darker emotion — anger, and a strange sort of resignation. In the next instant, it's all buried deep beneath the mask. "Your hands pain you. Would you allow me to heal them? It would pose no difficulty."

"Oh, it's nothing to fret-..." The protests die down as Margo catches the cool reverb of the healing spell and the scent of pine needles and forest moss that accompanies it. Carlissa rubs the back of her hands and sighs with obvious relief. "Maker, that's better. Thank you kindly." Margo fishes in her pack for a diaper rash ointment and hands it to the elven woman with a nod that she hopes brokers no argument. She whipped it up while killing time and waiting for Evie to return from her cultist visit — with half a mind to give it to Bull as a diplomatic counter-gift. Time to let that fence mend itself. No matter. She can always make more. "Good for your hands — and for the children's rashes. How old is your youngest?" The refugees must have improvised a creche for the little ones such that the parents could work, because she's yet to see the younger child.

Carlissa's cheeks dimple. "She'll be four in two moons."

Margo returns the other's woman smile with one of her own, the small twinge of sadness quickly redirected into a display of professional interest aimed at some overly tightly packed elfroot set out to dry atop makeshift shelving. Tryan's work, no doubt. She frowns. Considering the boy's skills, this seems like a rookie mistake. He packed the plants too tight, and at this rate they would mold before they dry. Margo ruffles through the biomass — and freezes. No mistake. Beneath the outer layer of regular elfroot, a flash of glossy purple catches the morning rays.

Carlissa nods once, holding Margo's gaze for a few moments too long, and then she taps a finger against her lips — a casual request for silence. Margo rearranges the regular elfroot to hide the stunning wealth of its royal brethren and follows their hostess towards the outside hearth, Solas at her side. He frowns in question, but Margo shakes her head once.

As if summoned by her thoughts of him, Tryan appears with a little girl in tow. At the sight of the two strange visitors, the younger kid takes off towards her mother at truly spectacular speed and dives underneath Carlissa's apron. From the safety of her new shelter, she observes the intruders with a mixture of curiosity and distrust. She has a crop of wispy black hair that puts one in mind of a baby raven; she has her mother's copper skin; and she is even more obviously homo dwarvicus than her brother. Margo catches her gaze lingering on the little girl before she reroutes it. She is not alone in her not particularly discreet gawking, though Solas buries his undecipherable expression beneath a socially appropriate mask rather more quickly.

None of this is lost on Carlissa, but the woman doesn't seem offended. She rubs the girl's back, picks up the ball of dough her eldest unfolds from a damp towel, and begins stretching it into flatbread with quick, well-practiced motions. "That's Fria. She doesn't talk. Not since... Well."

Margo's stomach plummets. Poor kids.

Tryan busies himself with setting up a frying pan over the fire. "D'you see it?" he asks Margo. He is trying very hard to look cool and casual.

Margo nods solemnly. "Quite the find."

"Want to hear something strange?" He pours some oil into the pan from a small clay jug and gives her a conspiratorial look. "Saw it in a dream last night. That's how I knew where to look."

Margo forces her expression to remain absolutely neutral. So. Constancy kept its end of the bargain, it would seem. "Do you often have these sorts of dreams?" she asks lightly.

"Nope. Hardly ever dream at all. Anyway, it's gonna keep us through the winter — there's lots more where it came from — and the merchant caravan's due in two weeks." Tryan's coolly self-possessed facade cracks, and he beams at them like the kid he is. He has his mother's dimples. "The dwarves always give me a good price."

"Think you could keep the patch going for a while?" Margo asks. The trick would be to not overharvest it. And since elfroot is rhizomatic, it shouldn't be too difficult to replant some, spread it around.

The boy's expression sours. "I don't know. If someone else finds it, they'll just gather it all and sell it to the folks inside..."

"The caravans don't trade with us, only with Speaker Anais." Carlissa interjects. "'Cept Tryan. Got his father's face, he does..."

Tryan nods in confirmation. "And the nobles inside Winterwatch will just take it all on account of it growing on the bann's land."

Carlissa tosses the dough into the oil, and the flatbread hisses and sizzles, as if inspired to provide some acoustic accompaniment to Margo's ever-souring opinion of the cultists, the caravaneers, and the whole sordid clusterfuck of intricately stratified prejudice that calls itself Thedas. On the other side of the fire, Solas stares at Tryan with a strange frown — somewhere on the road from intellectual strain to visceral unease and back again. When he becomes aware of Margo's attention on him, his face rearranges itself into a familiar, pleasantly polite façade.

Interesting. If she were a betting woman, Margo would theorize that there is something about the mixed-race offspring that bothers him — Solas wore a similar expression when he saw Little Red Jenny in Redcliffe. Is it some sort of racial tic? Of course, there is the matter of wonky genetics — so far, the two examples she has seen suggest that elven phenotypic traits are entirely recessive.

A conversation for a later time. She regroups and offers Tryan her best used-car-salesman smile. Not that she plans to cheat him — quite the opposite. And here's to hoping that Lud can be reasoned into this later, but Margo is not above going straight to Evie, now that the kid is growing into her Heraldness. Might as well encourage her to start throwing her holy weight around for the benefit of miscellaneous living beings. "I have an idea. What if we bought it off you? The Inquisition, I mean. Two weeks is a long time to wait for a caravan, and you'll lose a lot of the plants if they're not aired properly while they're dried. There might even be some long-term coin in it, especially if it's all kept discreet. The Inquisition is always looking for supplies."

Tryan weighs this offer with all the seriousness of a twelve-year-old suddenly thrust into the potential role of breadwinner. In the meantime, Carlissa finishes cooking the flatbread and makes short work of the eggs.

"How do I know you won't cheat?" he finally asks.

Margo accepts the folded dough and egg from their hostess and meets the boy's suspicious squint with a solemn nod. "Good question. First, because there are enough people within the Inquisition trying to do the right thing." All right, she will have to do better than that — the statement flows out like pulling teeth with rusty pliers. She clears her throat, blows on the flatbread to cool it, and continues. "But more importantly, because a well-cared-for patch of land that produces expensive herbs — and someone who knows how to harvest it lightly so that it keeps on producing — is worth a lot more than a few sacks of collected plants." At least, in principle.

Tryan's expression turns shrewd — a glimpse of the man he will likely grow into. "If your people can give us a fair price — then... I don't know. You won't have to worry about overplucking from us. It's the others. Maybe send in some soldiers, just to know we're not to be messed with... Under the protection of the Inquisition and all that."

"Don't mind him," Carlissa cuts in with a pointed look at her business-minded eldest. "He's not got the looks to know it on his own hide yet, and I pray to Andraste and the Creators and whatever else is of a mind to listen that he never will. But I sure know it right enough. If you got any sway with the shems that run this Inquisition of yours, then help if you can, but I know what happens to our kind when we speak out of turn." There is no pity or sadness to the woman's statement — she delivers it in a level, conversational tone between two bites of flatbread. On her lap, Fria is busy picking bits of egg out of the dough with grubby little fingers.

"Do not fret over us, lethallan." Solas's lips twitch with something like a smile — but there is only steel in his gaze. "It is never overly difficult to convince those in charge of their own interests."

"Aye," Carlissa nods, with that same calm knowing look. "Trouble is, those interests of theirs are 'bout as reliable as the winds of Harvestmere."

Tryan hurries through his mouthful of food so that he can butt into the adults' conversation before getting permanently sidelined. "But mamae... it's worth a try! And it won't be just me. And it don't have to be just the elfroot, neither." Realizing all attention is suddenly on him, Tryan blushes but rushes on. His cheeks already bear the trace of a nascent fuzz that will eventually turn into a spectacular beard. "Jeb's even better at finding beetles and spiders than I am, and Mistress Hludwiga said you can use the shells for splinting and the silk for staving off bleeding. Myrrh's got a nose for embrium, says she can smell it. I can always find elfroot. And we'll teach the little ones." He looks at Margo. "Tell her, Mistress Em! We even knew some stuff you didn't, didn't we? Uh, sorry, I mean... ma'am?"

Margo grins. "Oh, 'Mistress Em' is way better than 'ma'am.' And yes. You most definitely did."

Carlissa's disapproving frown is haunted by a helplessly indulgent half-smile. Margo reflects that it is a good thing her eldest is such a sharp cookie — the woman won't have much of a heart to discipline him, not with the ghost of his father's face flashing beneath the childish roundness of his features. "If you can talk your way into it, then fine with me. I know my heart'll rest easier if I know you kids are busy with something useful and not just loafing about and aggravating the nobles."

###

The plan to recruit Tryan and his gang of young herbalists goes with a creepy smoothness that has Margo increasingly, amorphously worried. As they get ready to say their goodbyes, she spots Lud a few houses over — the medic just happens to be visiting an older elven man with a long white braid and a faded bluish vallaslin that paints his face with vein-like whorls twisted into the shape of an austere third eye between his brows.

Lud listens to Margo's proposal, nods several times before the explanation is over, and concludes with a "good idea, we're on it." After that, the medic goes off to negotiate with Tryan and Carlissa directly, and Margo gathers her gear and follows Solas towards the Inquisition's camp. Before the shantytown disappears from view behind the bend in the wall, she looks back. Tryan, Jeb, and some of the other kids are already racing down the camp's central street, their heels kicking up dust clouds in the wake of their passage. You can see the band's excited purposefulness from the body language alone.

She notes Solas's expression. "Something is making you uneasy?" She looks at him more carefully, trying to pick apart the complex mixture of emotions. "Is it Tryan?"

He shakes his head and briefly brushes his knuckles against the back of her hand. "Not in itself. It is quite clear that his mother simply chose a man according to the desires of her own heart. I would not fault anyone for that."

"Do the kids always end up looking like the non-Elvhen parent?" Margo asks gently.

They walk in silence for another ten paces. The Inquisition's tents, scattered in front of the keep's main entrance, are in a state of partial disassembly. She spots Blackwall and Bull dismantling the largest one, with Dorian standing at a safe distance and very clearly offering helpful but ill-received commentary.

Solas stops, and Margo follows suit. His gaze remains fixed straight ahead. "The Fade is not the most reliable keeper of history... Have you read much about the fall of Elvhenan, fenor?"

Margo shakes her head. "Only Genitivi. He points the finger at Tevinter, but from what I know, such things are usually a lot more complicated than a single external invader."

Solas nods. "Yes. I would venture that the ancient elves' downfall had been underway for some time. Yet war is war, and its causes, however complex, do not lessen its atrocities."

Margo frowns. What is he driving at? What is the conne—... Oh. Oh, unmerciful universe. She sucks in a lungful of air. "Do... Was the pattern of heredity known then?" Keeping it academic staves off the prickle of sticky horror.

"According to the memories I witnessed, by the time Arlathan fell, it must have become obvious."

The silence between them sediments, turns leaden. Margo forces the words out. "Something like this took place in the part of the world I come from. But in much more recent history."

Solas's face snaps towards her. "Were you..."

"No... no. I was still young when the war happened, and the region I am from was spared much of the direct violence." She swallows. "My people do not have your world's racial diversity. But the intent of such practices is... much the same."

The policy circuit's euphemistic tag for it fills her with wordless, helpless rage, even now. Perhaps some prudish Theodosian historian will also come to describe such things as "cleansing." Beneath the old, half-overgrown anger, the memory turns in its grave. Her restless dead. She can almost taste the aromatic dust of Baba's attic, and, cutting through it, the scent of heated plastic from Uncle Janos's Walkman, borrowed under false pretenses. When they had tried to resurrect their parents through the traces their professional lives left behind, Margo and Jake had discovered boxes of audiotapes. The quality was awful, but they listened anyway, furtively, hidden in the dark between burlap sacks of dried herbs. Dozens and dozens of interviews with the women. Some had snippets of conversations. A few had full-length accounts, delivered in flat, matter-of-fact voices.

But what stayed with her through the years was the crackle of emptiness. Kilometers of magnetized silence.

Later, different humanitarian organization would quantify the victims at anywhere between twenty-five and fifty thousand. Only the women counted as "victims."

"Solas..." She swallows. Tries again. "Are there records? Of Tevinter armed forces being ordered or encouraged to..." She doesn't finish the sentence. Not that she needs to.

Solas's expression shatters, then shutters. "There are no records, heart. Nothing left but memories." The rest of his utterance is barely audible. "And I suppose this world you see around you."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Varric's editor._

A quick author's note/meta: I do not make Margo's background entirely explicit, but the backstory is that Margo was born circa 1986 in a mostly ethnically Hungarian village in former Yugoslavia. She would have been 5-7 during the Bosnian war. In her convo with Solas at the end of the chapter, she is referring to Milosevic's campaigns of ethnic cleansing. The only geographic hint about where she's from is that the village is on the shores of the Dunav (Danube river), which would likely place her in Croatia, on the border with Serbia - somewhat north of most of the military conflict, but still in a zone controlled by Serbian forces during the war. Margo is not part of the ethnic group that would have been targeted most violently, but the war would have been in the background of her early childhood. We learn that her parents were investigative journalists (respectively journalist and documentary filmmaker) and it is strongly suggested that they were working in conflict zones (and eventually died in a car bomb). Their profession is also partially why Margo and Jake had been handed over to Baba to raise - out of the danger zones. I hope this clarifies things a bit - I realize you need to have some familiarity with this part of the world and its history to read between the lines, and it's a lot to ask, so I hope the explanation helps - for a variety of reasons, I don't want to make this explicit or harp on it in the main story, but I hope this helps map where Margo is coming from as a character a little bit better.

Next up: The team returns to Haven, Margo receives a letter from a certain beekeeper, and the nugs are shifty.


	76. Chapter 76: Exodus

_In which Margo writes reports, reflects on the local wildlife, and gets a letter from a friend._

* * *

The journey back to Haven proceeds so smoothly that Margo quickly develops the unshakable suspicion that the universe has gone off to regroup and is now quietly plotting some fresh, this time truly unsurpassed nastiness. The social forces that structure the internal clockwork of the Inquisition pull Margo back with her "team" towards the tail of their long procession of wagons and the weaponized cutthroats who guard them. The same invisible forces push Solas forward, with one last brush of his fingers against her hand and a private half-smile, and on towards one of Evie's outer orbits. Before the march propels them out of view, Margo has a sudden, hyperreal vision of them — Evie at the center on her pacer, Madame de Fer at her right, Dorian at her left. Ser Barris and the rest of the Nine Riders — every bit the spectral wraiths in the gloomy, fog-drenched early morning that presages a turn towards a colder season — fan out behind the mages, an ambiguous escort that doesn't quite know its own purpose beyond the need to stay within the gravitational pull of Andraste's Herald. For a few moments, they seem suspended in time, a stolen snapshot of some deciding historical event that has not yet crested the summit of its own momentousness.

And then, a bend in the road, and they dissolve in the fog.

The hush that settles over the Hinterlands along with the milky mist is oddly communicative, and the little chatter there is in her group is carried out in hushed tones. At one point, when they stop to water the horses, her attention is drawn by the sound of quiet squealing. A little troop of nugs — pink, hairless, with squinty little eyes — scrambles across the tract and dives, one by one, into the ditch at the side of the road. In fact, the woods seem to be teeming with unfamiliar wildlife. Not the usual rams and fennec foxes, but nugs, freakishly large spiders. She could swear she also spied an odd, leathery creature that looked like a miniature velociraptor, but it could have been simply a strange effect of the fog.

Margo spends long stretches of the day perched on a crate at the back of one of the carts, alongside Lud and Varric, writing up notes on the refugee camp. It's an odd feeling — one part satisfaction at a job done well, of old, well-honed skills finally being used appropriately, like stretching muscles gone stiff from disuse; and one part intense, soul-wrenching grief about the implications of what she is documenting. Family trees bristling with amputated limbs, absent presences that have her scratching out the familiar obeli after placing them next to the names of the lost or disappeared by sheer force of habit. At her question about how to typographically represent the dead, Varric, deep into his own writing and hard to distract from it, simply shrugs. "Just cross out the name, I guess," he offers unhelpfully.

Later, when her job for the ambassador is completed to her own satisfaction, Margo spends some time with Torquemada's concocted biography of her body's previous owner. The documents are thin on the details, and Margo puzzles at what the spymaster chose to redact. The fabricated identity places Maile's birth and early years in Nevarra — some small city called Ghislain, on the border with Orlais, and in a region Margo decides is the Theodosian counterpart of Alsace-Lorraine. For some reason, it erases entirely her Dalish years, substituting that period with a relocation to an Orlesian city called Halamshiral. She barks an uneasy laugh over the name — and the supremely gauche portmanteau of halal and haram . In any event, Torquemada's condensed notes supply an account of alienage life painted in such bold strokes of red and black they read like the cliffnotes to some grimdark pastiche of Emile Zola's Germinal.

Varric, ever the unobtrusively observant dwarf, takes note of Margo's facial gymnastics, abandons his writerly endeavor, and peeks over her shoulder to get a better look at her reading materials. At close proximity, Margo notices that he wears a cologne — judging by the understated but complex smell, an expensive one. She lets him snoop. What harm can it do? The cat is out of the bag anyway.

"And this, Prickly, is why an assortment of events arranged sequentially a story does not make," he snorts with barely veiled derision. "Want me to take a look at it?"

"You would?" Margo beams at him. She could, with some effort, create the semblance of a personal history out of this — but who is she kidding. It won't breathe on its own. She's never been the writerly type of scholar, always more interested in documenting the history of things than people. Recruiting an actual fiction writer for this? Yes, please. "And I give you permission to use this as inspiration in your own pursuits. Just..." She trails off.

"Not a peep to the spymaster, don't worry. Mind if I hang on to it for a bit? I'll have something for you by the time we get to Haven." He tucks the vellum into the inside of his coat. "It'll cost you that beer you've been failing to buy me." And a chat, he doesn't add — but he doesn't have to.

From the crest of the mountain pass where they camp for the night, Margo can spot Haven. In the dwindling daylight the village looks like a flickering orange eye in the bruised socket of the lake bed that shelters it. She is trying to find a place upwind from the heavy, acrid smoke released by the damp firewood when Amund's towering form materializes from the darkness. He crouches down silently, one heavy hand landing briefly on Margo's shoulder.

"I have wronged you, luzzil spinna." His voice is heavy and tense, the words clipped down to a socially acceptable strict minimum. Then he sighs, his shoulders relaxing a fraction, and he rumbles a reluctant chuckle. "It was brash to think that I could sing the spirit alone, without clan or kin, and with only you for kith. Worse than a fool is an old fool who forgets about the white in his beard just because he shaved it off, eh?"

Is Amund joking with her? Margo turns to take a better look at the Avvar. She could swear one corner of the augur's mouth hitches up, but then he is back to his habitual stoic neutrality. Well. There's a novel development.

She glances around. They are well out of earshot of the rest of their company, and no one is paying them any particular attention anyway. Varric, done with the day's writing, wandered off to find a game of cards. Lud and two of Torquemada's scouts whose names Margo doesn't know are passing a bottle around and laughing over some yarn Scout Harding is spinning. Cole is nowhere in sight. The central campfire, where most of the Inquisition's finest are congregating — Evie included — is a good thirty yards away, and none of the people around it looks possessed by the sudden urge to socialize with the periphery.

Still, when she speaks, she keeps her voice low. "We both should have planned for Imshael. I am as much at fault as you are."

"I, of all people, should not have underestimated your wishmonger. The fault is mine, though I told you to stop calling on him."

Margo decides to grab the proverbial bull by the horns. This is not the first time Amund has accused her of being a lot more agentive in her relationship with the Cosmic Shitgibbon than she believes herself to be. "What do you actually mean by calling ? I have a feeling you have a... rather precise definition of what that is."

"In this and this alone, gods are much like us, little spider. It is not you they seek — their only wish is to hear themselves in our songs. They come to those whose songs sing them the loudest." The augur's dark gaze lingers on her face, his expression inscrutable beneath the mask. Margo forces herself not to fidget uncomfortably. She can't shake the impression that the Avvar is expecting something from her — and that she is failing to deliver, like an actor who not only forgot their part of the dialogue but appears to be rather confused about what play this is in the first place. Another few seconds of indecipherable staring, and Amund makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. "No matter. Mourning a broken axe won't make it any more whole. What is done is done. I owe you skuld, spinner."

Margo frowns, and peers at the augur. "A... debt? Is that the meaning?"

"It remains to be seen whether either of us lives long enough to see it settled." He straightens from his crouching position. "Rest while you can."And with that, Amund turns on his heels and departs in an unknown direction.

After the Avvar leaves, Margo dutifully attempts to skim through the tome Josephine lent her on pre-Andrastian religions, but Sister Rondwyn's prose is peppered with a generous helping of descriptors like "savages," "primitives," and the ever popular "heathens," and Margo's readerly diligence quickly loses the battle against her rumbling stomach. She tracks down a cooking fire by the smell. Blackwall, on culinary duty, waves her over. Next to him, Sera is plowing through the contents of her wooden bowl with great gusto — which doesn't prevent her from speaking around the food or gesticulating wildly with her spoon. Bull, who has forfeited the company of his Chargers in favor of Blackwall's cooking, is in the process of demolishing the charred haunch of some unfortunate land mammal, grease painting his fingers and chin slick in the firelight. Margo has the distinct feeling she is wandering into the middle of a heated conversation.

"Hungry?" Blackwall asks. "Join us."

"Yeah, Blondie, come sit. We were just talking about you." Bull pats the ground next to himself with his free hand.

Margo glances at Sera, expecting hostility — but is pleasantly surprised. Shrewdness, yes, but not animosity. "Five," Sera says, a fierce little glint in her eyes, there, then muted.

"Five?" Margo asks, since the archer clearly expects her to supply a follow-up question.

"Five. For the Jennies. Right side of the wall." She narrows her eyes. " You know."

Ah. They both chose the refugees — and it is abundantly clear that to Sera that choice matters. Margo whistles appreciatively. "That's a lot, then?"

"Frigging yeah, that's a lot. 'Course, sodding tosspots in the keep didn't make it hard, with how they been treating them. Which is what you'd expect from a load of gits who look at a rift and go, 'Whoa, look, an ugly green bunghole spitting out demons. Guess I'll worship it.' Say..." Sera's eyes narrow, that shrewd little glint returning. "Wouldn't happen to know what Old Long, Bald, and Ugly wanted with the refugees? I'da thought he'd go cozy up with the tossers in the fortress. So, seeing how you two are chummy chummy..." Sera leers, and pantomimes a predictable — if not technically accurate — form of sexual congress. Fortunately, Blackwall, bless the considerate bear, chooses this moment to hand Margo a bowl of stew, which gives her the opportunity to occupy herself with the food, fail to respond, and preserve a shred of dignity. On the other hand, the more they're focused on her love life, the less likely they are to dig into the other stuff. Somehow, she has the distinct feeling that the idea that she transacted with a spirit by the questionable name of "Legion" in order to skew the probability of the refugees' survival would not go over well with this particular audience, no matter how many living beings may have benefited.

"Nah," Bull rumbles, clearly amused. "You seen Solas, Sera? That's not the look of a guy who's got someone to help him let off steam. Trust me on this, I can spot these things. My money's on the Avvar." He squints at Margo with his good eye. "Been giving Solas the runaround, Blondie?"

"Let the woman eat in peace, you two," Blackwall intervenes. "Don't bloody see how who's shagging who is anybody's business but theirs." Margo notes that there is bit of a flush creeping up above the luxurious vegetation that covers most of the Warden's face.

"Or not shagging. Beardie won't tell us about Josie, either," Sera confides, scraping up the remnants of her stew with enviable meticulousness. "More in there, yeah?" She thrusts her bowl at Blackwall.

"Yes. And if you want more stew, this conversation is done."

"Is this what you've been discussing?" Margo asks, vaguely relieved that the spotlight has moved on from her and deeply reluctant to potentially bring it back — but at this point she feels like she needs to show support for Blackwall's valiant effort at redirection.

There is an odd, pregnant pause, and then Bull tosses the bones left from his meal into the fire. "Nope. You notice the nugs, Blondie?"

Margo blinks at this stunning non sequitur and pauses in her chewing. The nugs? "Is that what we're eating?" It's the only association she is able to dredge up on short notice.

"Sure is," Bull confirms.

She frowns. Not that the unsettlingly naked little creatures are an unusual meal, and Margo has gotten used to seeing them hopping around Haven, blissfully oblivious to the two inevitably doomed trajectories that lead them to Master Harritt's hide racks and Flissa's stews.

"At least no deepstalkers so far," Sera adds. "Ugly frigging bastards."

"You've lost me," Margo admits finally. "I've seen a few nugs on the road. Is it nug migration season?"

"You've been in these parts for months, Blackwall. Ever seen anything like it?" Bull's tone is deceptively casual.

Blackwall hands off the next portion of stew to the insatiable elf, settles cross-legged by the fire, extracts a short clay pipe and a pouch from an inside pocket, and begins packing the bowl with a strong-smelling herbal melange. "No, but I'm not a specialist on nugs, Bull."

The Qunari squints. "Aren't they all over the Deep Roads? That's what I hear, anyway." When Blackwall offers a noncommittal grunt, Bull shakes his head, and, for the briefest of moments, unease flashes across his features. "Back on Seheron, the Vints used fire to smoke out enemy troops. Especially in the dry season — goes through the brush so fast there's no way you can outrun it on foot. Know how you can tell when to get out of there?"

The metaphorical lightbulb flickers on, and Margo is nodding vigorously, her mind already a few thoughts ahead of the communicative needs of the situation. Fleeing animals. That's usually the first sign. "Nugs are underground creatures, aren't they?" She remembers reading about the Deep Roads in Brother Genitivi's ever-helpful magnum opus, but up until this moment the dwarven thruways were at best an intriguing abstraction. "It's been raining a lot," she volunteers, trying to puzzle out what has Bull looking so grim and Blackwall looking so uncomfortable. And why Sera is huddled over herself and staring boorishly into the flames. "Do you think they're getting flooded out in this area?"

Her question is met with uneasy silence. "Well, it ain't a Blight, innit?" Sera cuts in. "Right, Beardy? Don't you Wardens hear Blights coming, or some shite?"

Margo frowns. At Sera's question, Blackwall shifts uncertainly. Then he takes a drag on his pipe, releases a cloud of smoke into the damp night air, and shrugs in almost convincing dismissal. "Doesn't have to be a Blight. Maybe darkspawn movements have them spooked. Maybe it's just the rains."

"We haven't seen any darkspawn on the surface, big guy," Bull opines. "And it ain't just the nugs. It's the predators, too. Fucking spiders." The Qunari makes a disgusted noise. He maneuvers his giant axe onto his lap, fishes for a polishing cloth in his rucksack, and sets to work with absurdly dainty, fastidious attention. Margo reflects that there is a man with a healthy love for his weapon. "Something's got them running," he adds after a pause.

Well, shit. From what she's read of the Blight, it doesn't sound like a pleasant experience. "We should tell Evie," Margo suggests cautiously.

Bull doesn't lift his gaze from his weapon. "Due respect to the kid, but what do you think she can do? The Inquisition needs to distance itself from the Chantry. The Herald makes for a good figurehead. That's not the same as making the decisions." He glances up, trading a brief look with Sera. And then he stares at Blackwall, but the Warden averts his eyes. Sera scowls at both men but doesn't add anything — or contradict. "This needs to go higher."

"Higher than the Herald of Andraste?" Blackwall huffs a chuckle around a puff of smoke. "And say what? That the nugs are shifty? Get Leliana to send a raven to the University of Orlais, ask if the stuffy blighters have a specialist on underground critters? We have a Chantry conspiracy to murder the Herald on our hands and a bunch of unvetted templars who can't tell their commander from an envy demon milling about — and any of them might've been in on that little stunt the clerics pulled, for all we know. Our recruits are barely able to hold their own, and we're still short on men and supplies. You want us to bother the spymaster with nugs? She'd laugh us out of the room."

"All the more reason to go to Evie with this. And maybe Cassandra? Bull, what about your contacts? Sera, you got anything from the Jennies?"

"Nothing noteworthy on my end," Bull evades.

"Not the Jennies..." Sera trails, and then she squints speculatively. "Might know a bloke who might know something, though. Bees, yeah?"

Margo grins. "Goran!"

"Speaking of. Almost forgot." Sera sets down her empty bowl and starts rummaging through her pack. "Wasn't gonna give it to you, 'cause dirty liar, yeah? But you're not so bad. Maybe. Also old codger'll chew me out. Plus, felt bad. A little. Where'd it go?"

A triumphant "gotcha!" later, and Sera hands Margo a rumpled note, visible grease stains making the folded parchment translucent in places. The beeswax seal has been visibly — and unceremoniously — tampered with. "Can't make sense of it anyway, because Goran."

Margo unfolds the note with a mixture of eagerness and odd, inexplicable dread.

 _Nested Doll,_

 _Toothpaste good? Works?_

 _Friends in high places, old Goran hears. Higher places soon. If alive._

 _Bees come home, dance dance dance, show the way. Sometime show where not go, yes? Sometime show who else coming._

 _Nice nested doll ask good questions, yes? So. Goran tell story, nested doll open ears and listen._

 _Long ago. Goran old, remembers. Clever young man. Climbs Tree, sees much. Falls off branch. Wakes up, thinks knows. Makes things better, yes? Saves world. Be hero._

 _Tree tricky, yes? But young man clever! Knows better! Sees old lizard, blood useful. Ashes? Not so useful. Changes coming, big changes. Break eggs, make omelette. So spill, spill, spill, bleed a few, get hands dirty. Worth it, yes?_

 _Makes net. For later. Keep in, or keep out?_

 _Hides surprise under floorboards. Found it?_

 _But. Big lizard, roomy, secret inside. Like egg with needle, hidey hide, good trick, that. Break egg, lose needle. Haystack, yes? Pretty little princess pricks finger. Dreams things. Learn much, grow old fast._

 _Understood? No? Ask good questions._

 _Long journey ahead. Burden heavy, road short. Burden light, road long. Carry dead, not get far._

 _Dress warm. For winter. Mind the wolves._

 _Goran_

* * *

This chapter was brought to you by shifty nugs.

Author's Note: To understand Goran's letter, you might want to revisit the possible choices one makes during the Urn of Sacred Ashes. And then turn your thoughts to the Jaws of Hakkon DLC. That is all. Eventually, it'll all make sense. Hopefully.

Next up: A visit from a certain choice spirit, and Dorian's musings on the Herald


	77. Chapter 77: Mirror Mirror

_In which we're steadily climbing to the top of the rollercoaster, Imshael pays a visit, and Dorian has some concerns about Evie._

 _ **Content warning** : Imshael is being a creep as per usual. Passing reference to opiate use._

* * *

She knows something is wrong the second she glimpses the mirror. It is huge — five meters of opalescent shimmer in brilliant blues and oranges, with flashes of a dark violet so rich it takes every bit of Margo's willpower not to reach out and run her fingers over the shifting surface. Her eyes tell her that it is liquid, but her brain, apparently strongly dedicated to the concept of gravity, stubbornly refuses the input and demands verification.

"Hello, poppet."

In the dream — she must have fallen asleep in the exceedingly uncomfortable armchair in her office, an event that has been known to happen during marathon grading sessions — Imshael's voice is disembodied yet intimately close. She doesn't need to see him to recognize the mask he donned.

"Oh, you piece of shit." It comes out flat.

"You know, you are becoming rather unimaginative with your insults. And ungrateful to boot. Here I thought you might enjoy a reminder of your only living relation. Not to mention of your former life."

"There is very little about you I enjoy, other than your absence." She almost manages a conversational tone — or close enough, anyway — and turns around to survey the dreamscape. Tree-like sculptures sprout haphazardly from the dusty ground, their limbs curved into spheres that look like they are missing some crucial component. Margo decides that they could do with a glowing orb at the center. The scene appears at once brilliantly saturated and oddly discolored, as if glimpsed through a golden fog. If King Midas had a personal pocket universe, this is what it would look like.

The voice in her head laughs her brother's laughter, quiet and achingly familiar. "And yet, I suspect you might learn to appreciate me over time. I'm very patient, you see. I have all the time in the world, after all. Do you know what this is, love?"

"A verbose conversation opener?" She takes a step towards the closest tree. If she's going to be stuck in another dream of the Cosmic Asshat variety, she might as well make virtue of necessity and explore the local flora. The trunk appears carved of a resin-like substance akin to black amber. It feels strangely warm to the touch. A quick glance towards the mirror confirms that the frame is made of a similar substance.

"See, much better. Whatever would I do without the pleasure of your clever repartee. They're called eluvians. Well, not the real thing, of course, since we are in the Fade, and you're... not likely to find one here. This — all of this — is a replica. Constructed by yours truly solely for your benefit, I should add."

"A replica of what?"

"A very curious little place, but never mind that for now. Would you care to learn the mirror's purpose?"

"Let me guess." She glances at the gothic arch of the mirror's frame before returning her attention to the tree. "It's either a portal to another dimension, or a vindictively misogynistic piece of furniture that will undermine my self-esteem through unfair comparisons to a younger woman, and will thus drive me to murder via magical fruit."

Imshael misses a beat, and Margo scores the round in her favor.

"Jest if you must, my sweet morsel, but have a care." A sense of something ancient, malignant, and utterly alien seeps through the cracks in the veneer of affability. "Where do you think you are?"

She shrugs. "In my office, I presume. You try to grade eighty-seven midterms, and then we'll talk."

For some reason, this puts the jovial back into Shitgibbon's disembodied voice. Somewhere along the way he has stopped pretending to sound like Jake — the timbre is unfamiliar, with a strong English accent she can't place more precisely, one shade away from theatrical villainy. "Ah, my lost little lamb, I fear you are confused. You are in Haven, of course, asleep over some formulary, no doubt. Have I mentioned that I do have a sudden fondness for your very... placid collaborator? Is that the term? He seems to rather effectively chip away at all your hard-earned defenses."

A chill ices down her spine as the memories snap into focus, and with them the dream loses its inoffensive contours. She isn't in her office, dozing off over a pile of grading. That world is gone from her. What is the case comes back slowly. The delay to their part of the convoy, courtesy of a broken axle. Their return, a day behind the rest of the expedition, into a village teeming with frenetic activity. A brief moment spent in Solas's hut — his travel gear set out to dry next to the warm hearth, but the elf himself is nowhere in sight. A note from Josephine directing her to submit her report and then to go assist Adan.

And, of course, the oddly long list of formulas. She doesn't recall falling asleep.

"All better?" Imshael asks, mocking.

"What do you want?"

"I thought we might finish our previous conversation."

Like hell.

She tries to reach out with that strange, alien part of herself — it has become stronger over the past weeks, more robust. It still falls outside of her taxonomic classifications — too gentle to be described as "will," too fluid for the term "awareness," but still kindred to both concepts. She tugs, discreetly, at the dream's infrastructure. It snags — like reeling in a fish — then it slips right out of her grasp. Margo swears quietly.

"Leaving so soon?" The voice inside her head turns insinuating. The scenery shifts, and Margo's heart stutters and sinks. She is in her apartment, standing in the hallway that leads to the living room. Mirror Mirror on the Wall is blocking the entrance, its surface rippling to great aesthetic effect. And through the mirror, she can see her brother, impossibly pale and impossibly thin, sprawled on the couch with a tourniquet loosely looped around his arm.

From there, it's instinct. She lunges forward with a single thought. The naloxone kit should still be right there, under the couch. But before she can breach the surface, she is yanked back violently.

"Not so fast, poppet." Imshael materializes — like the Cheshire Cat, starting with a familiar flash of white teeth. He's wearing Lancelot the Ill-Suited for the Occasion again. The facsimile of the ex-chevalier crowds Margo into the wall, its hands coming to rest on her shoulders — an almost friendly, companionable gesture if not for the radiating malice. "There is a small condition. In my estimation, we have just enough time — your little Herald and her templars are admirably punctual. Still. You see — you and I are much in the same predicament, are we not?" Its tone turns confidential. "I can't approach the Breach, either. Not safely, anyway. Not until they dampen it enough." He leans forward. Warm lips brush against the shell of her ear. "Whatever should we do in the meantime?" the thing asks.

Terror prickles down her spine — not the least because Imshael activated what Margo decides must be a desire demon's pheromonal function, and her body begins to react accordingly. So much for "choice spirit." "Does the smarmy shitbucket act work on all the girls?" she squeaks out. "If you want me to negotiate, give me some fucking space."

"Did I use the wrong mask again?" it tuts. "Would you rather I wore the wolf pelt?" It slithers closer, pressing her into the wall, but aside from its hands slowly curling around her neck, the demon makes no further moves. She tries to focus on this oddity in a desperate attempt to compartmentalize the mixture of horror, lust, and revulsion that batters at her consciousness. There is a methodology to his advances — a logic, or pattern... or a set of limitations? Rules?

"Does it have to be through sex?" she asks, in a bid to stall. Right. Keep it talking.

"Nothing has to be anything. Not with me, in any case." It almost sounds peeved. "I would appreciate a little faith in my complexity, poppet." And then its lips stretch into a perversely charming smile. "But it might as well be, hmm?"

She narrows her eyes. "Ah, but I have to agree to it, don't I? Is that how it works?"

Its thumbs caress the sensitive skin at the sides of her neck, sending down a treacherous shiver. "I have been around for a long time, pet. I've found that everyone has a set of conditions under which they will agree."

Fuck this. Margo puts her hands on the bastard's shoulder, shifts her hip back, and, using the momentary flash of surprise on Ser Michel the Inappropriately Deployed's borrowed face as her cue, knees the creature in the crotch.

It has the desired effect. Imshael stumbles back and folds over himself with a groan. Margo releases the breath she was holding and yanks at the dream's fabric. Something snags and rips. She tastes pennies against the roof of her mouth. Pain blooms at the back of her head, and then...

Margo jolts upright and smacks the top of her forehead on a low shelf above the desk. The stool on which she was sitting wobbles from under her, and then her ass lands on the hard planks of the apothecary's floor with a muted thud.

"Ow ow ow, goddammit!" Margo growls and slams her palm against her bruised brow. She's going to have a goose egg to make an ostrich proud. She spots Clemence sitting on a chair in the corner. "Why didn't you wake me?" she hisses, more harshly than she intends to.

Slowly, as if through layers of water, the Tranquil's gaze focuses on her. There are tear tracks on his cheeks, but his expression betrays confusion rather than distress. "I am... uncertain? Apologies, Apprentice Duvalle, I am afraid I cannot remember."

###

It is an immense relief to find Dorian loitering in the courtyard. "You didn't go with the others?"

He gives Margo a critical once over, his eyes lingering on her forehead — apparently the elfroot potion did not entirely erase the results of her encounter with the shelf. He cocks an eyebrow. "Nor did you, it would seem, though may I suggest that beating your head against the wall over it is entirely more than any of them deserve." Dorian's mustache twitches above the dove-gray weave of his clearly expensive scarf — the fabric soft and downy in appearance, like a hybrid of silk and cashmere. His smile is shallow, however, and his eyes remain serious. He looks either road-worn or severely underslept — or perhaps both. "I hear there was debate. Which of the mages would make for the best adornment of the undoubtedly impressive display of templar might as our steel-clad friends march to smite the Breach. With our lovely young Herald at their helm , as it were."

Margo manages a snort at the terrible pun, some of the residual terror receding at the prospect of the northerner's company. If she were to suddenly succumb to another fit of narcolepsy, Dorian would probably attempt to wake her up — if for no other reason than to indulge his curiosity.

At Dorian's rather demonstrative shiver, Margo throws open the door of the apothecary wider and gestures him inside. "Would you like to warm up?"

"As a matter of fact, I would. I don't suppose you happen to have wine?"

Margo shrugs, and steps aside. "Sadly, only alchemical spirits. Not that it stops Master Adan." Dorian winces. "So who made the cut, if not you?"

Clemence, his earlier confusion forgotten or filed away, is loading potash into the kiln they use for calcination. He greets Dorian with a neutral, "Good day, Lord Pavus," before promptly returning to his work.

"Who didn't make the cut is the more relevant question. I suppose the single criterion for barring admission was national origin." Dorian arranges himself on a nearby chair, sticks his nose into one of Margo's unstoppered potions, and waves his hand theatrically in front of his face to dispel the nonexistent stench. "What vile concoctions do they have you brewing this time?"

"It is a simple enhanced restorative, " Clemence offers before Margo has a chance to respond. "Though some do find the smell of deep mushroom offensive. It is a rare sensitivity, but not unheard of."

"I did not mean..." Dorian's pained expression is quickly replaced with something more affable. "Oh, never mind me, I fear my idleness only confounds the industrious — boredom is the breeding ground of vice, and all that." His attention returns to Margo. "My dear, would you indulge me in a short walk? I would recruit your undoubtedly peerless intellect to temporarily augment my own, should you be willing to spare it."

Margo decides to jump at the opportunity. If she is walking, she won't fall asleep. "Flattery will get you everywhere, but I still have—"

"Three more crates of sixteen restoratives remain on today's list, Apprentice Duvalle," Clemence offers neutrally.

"I won't be long. Are you hungry, Clemence? Should I bring food?"

She's not going to drop off to sleep while chewing, right?

The Tranquil squints through the condensation on the mica glass. "I expect I will be by the time you return. Food would be useful."

The air is bracingly cold, but its crisp chill is refreshing after the pungent humidity of the apothecary. Dorian captures Margo's arm and laces it through his own, one gloved hand resting on top of her fingers at the crook of his elbow. A few of the locals give them odd looks, but their gazes do not linger — by now perhaps habituated to Dorian's antics. They must make a curious pair — a Tevinter mage promenading around with an elf on his arm, when his countrymen unapologetically practice targeted chattel slavery. For an ungenerous moment, Margo wonders how much of this is performance, designed to signal something like "not all Vints." And whether he would feel quite so at ease with her if she weren't a body-snatching alien. She lets the thought sit on the back burner, simmering uneasily. In the meantime, the show of gallantry affords them a bubble of auditory privacy. Still, Dorian begins far afield.

"Quite the busy morning."

Margo looks around. Their walk towards Haven's central artery leads them towards the tavern, where a crew of workers is in the business of giving the Singing Maiden a cosmetic makeover. Further down, a half-dozen men dressed in the practical, sturdy wools and leathers of itinerant merchants are chatting with Seggrit and gesticulating towards an assortment of crates. In the courtyard at the foot of the temple, a delegation of nobles, their brightly colored, tightly fitted gambesons shimmering satin in the morning light, is receiving what Margo promptly identifies as the tour from one of the ambassador's assistants.

"Preemptively festive," Margo comments, receiving a sardonic snort for her trouble.

"Closing the Breach is not patching a sock, my dear. I dare say it is the political event of the year."

Margo turns her back towards the Breach — still conspicuously open — and represses a shudder. What if Shitgibbon wasn't lying? What if she could, in fact, go back?

What if it is right about Jake?

Don't stare into the abyss. Don't think about the pink elephant. Instead, she squints at the glittering dome of the chantry. The ravens that circle it have taken to amusing themselves by landing on the top of the cupola and tobogganing down the glittering curve, probably scratching up the gilt in the process. "If Evie succeeds, this will get the Chantry's knickers into an even further twist. We'll be legitimate competition then." Her voice almost doesn't wobble when she speaks.

"'We' — and it remains to be seen just how capacious this we will prove to be — are competition already. But this is not why I asked you on a morning stroll." Dorian's expression remains mild — a small smile playing at the corner of his lips — but his gaze is fogged over with a kind of abstract, unfocused irritation, as if looking for a more specific target, yet unable to settle on anything more tangible. "Look closer, and tell me I am not losing my mind."

Margo frowns and surveys Haven's morning bustle. By all appearances, it looks like any village gearing up for a festival — or a wedding. Except... something is off. There, next to the requisitions tent, several carts are being loaded instead of being unloaded. An unusual number of Cullen's men trot purposefully in small formations, lugging what Margo decides must be maintenance and repair equipment for the two siege weapons.

"I am still a little shaky on your seasons, but it seems a bit early for a spring cleaning," she comments.

Dorian nods pensively. "For a spring cleaning, yes. But perhaps not too early to prepare for unpleasant eventualities, all under the cover of anticipated celebrations."

Margo frowns, but decides to humor the mage. "Care to develop this alternative hypothesis further?"

"Oh, I do!" He grins brightly, but the smile is too sharp around the edges. "I..." He trails off. The muscles of his jaw tighten — a strange, fleeting expression somewhere between embarrassment, anger, and confusion. "I had a chat with our Qunari friend last night. He mentioned your discussions about nugs — and what their presence on the surface might signify. I must admit, the south is proving entirely too interesting for my tastes — vanishing Wardens, underground creatures inexplicably deciding to change their habitat, some insufferably mysterious ponce calling himself the Elder One throwing Alexius at what remains of the southern mages. What's next? A Blight?"

"Why do I have the feeling you're only half-joking?"

"I suppose because my sense of humor has been suffering erosion under the onslaught of all these portents of doom. Of course, it would be too much to expect the powers that be to inform the rest of us common rabble of the master plan, should one exist."

Margo frowns. Is this what has Dorian so sore? Being left out of the machinations of whomever is currently making leadership decisions? Or is it more personal — something to do with Bull and how much information the Ben-Hassrath was willing to share... or feed him. "We do have an inordinate concentration of spies." She gives Dorian's forearm a friendly squeeze. "Transparency and disclosure aren't exactly on the list of professional best practices around here."

"Yes, I suppose excessive inquisitiveness is not a trait upon which Inquisitions tend to look favorably." His eyes flash with an unusual flare of anger, typically hidden under layers of well-honed social decorum. "Which reminds me..." he adds, in a tone that makes it abundantly clear that what comes next is a carefully premeditated conversational turn. "Do you have a contingency plan? If all of this goes terribly wrong?"

"You're worried Evie might not be able to close the Breach?"

"No. Not quite. But now that we are on the topic, I do, in fact, worry about Evelyn. Our lovely young Herald is most unusual, don't you find?"

Margo shrugs. Somehow, the turn to Evie recenters her, clearing her mind of the sticky cobwebs left by the nightmare. There is no going back. She's known this from the beginning — Baba, after all, had implied as much. "Considering the hand she's been dealt, I think Evie has been playing it admirably well." It comes out drier than she would have liked.

Dorian tenses but then forces out a chuckle. "Oh, certainly. Forgive me, I occasionally forget how different your world must be. You see, a mage's skill set, however it was developed, tends to have a certain unifying quality. Let us call it flavor , for the sake of simplicity. Mages of course will have different innate capabilities — and different degrees of facility with different types of spells. For example, yours truly has always had a certain affinity for fire. Vivienne, while impressively well-versed in several schools — for a southern mage, anyway — is a virtuoso at manipulating ice spells, and water more generally." Dorian's smile becomes a little wicked. "As to your apostate associate, he is a rather curious case in his own right, isn't he? But I would venture that in his otherwise eclectic grab bag of magical abilities, lightning effects tend to dominate. Which brings us to Evie."

Margo nods. "Do go on." She tugs Dorian back towards the tavern in the hope of grabbing food before the lunch crowd files in. He lets himself be led willingly enough, half-lost in his thoughts.

"Well, let us start with the fact that Evelyn seems entirely unable to learn any spell at all — not even rudimentary ones, hardly above children's tricks — from any of the elemental schools. And not from lack of trying on our part or hers, mind you."

The door of the tavern swings open to let out a cloud of steam and several dust-covered dwarves of the stonemason persuasion. Margo and Dorian let them pass before stepping into the warm cacophony of cooking smells and ambient conversation. "Is this unusual, then?" Margo asks quietly, skirting around two familiar oafs who are in the process of affixing a freshly painted Hairy Eyeball to a set of mean looking meat hooks above the hearth. Behind the counter, Flissa is shoveling a batch of bread rolls into a brick oven. From his high vantage point on a rickety ladder, Tweedledee graces Margo and Dorian with a spiteful stare. Tweedledum is at least three ales south of tipsy, and if there is a flicker of recognition, it is quickly jettisoned in favor of ogling Flissa's backside.

"Since I do not know of a precedent for Lady Trevelyan, I fear that I cannot possibly answer that question." Dorian summarily ignores the Tweedles and proceeds to the bar. Done with wrangling the baked goods, Flissa turns towards them and blushes prettily, her cheeks dimpling with a preemptively exasperated grin at the sight of the mage.

"And what will Lord Pavus be criticizing today?" she inquires.

Dorian leans one elbow on the bar, and smiles brilliantly. "Criticize? Me? Perish the thought! As a matter of fact, I was preparing to sing the praises of those undoubtedly delightful little bread things you have stashed behind this fortress you call a counter."

Flissa, who turns out to be just as susceptible to Dorian's flattery as Margo, parts with three rolls and a small jar of pickled squash with an indulgent grumble about certain people whose names shouldn't be mentioned expecting special treatment.

"But Evie does just fine with necromancy, doesn't she?" They amble slowly back towards the apothecary.

"That, my dear, is an understatement. She does not just 'do fine.' It is as if—"

They don't get the chance to finish the conversation. An extremely grim-looking green-hooded elf skids to a stop in front of Margo and Dorian. "Report to the Nightingale. At once."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by a Public Service Announcement: one (poisoned) apple a day keeps the doctor away._

 _Next up: Leliana and some answers about the HOF._


	78. Chapter 78: For All We Have and Are

_In which Leliana shares a secret and we learn something new about the Hero of Ferelden_

* * *

The massive oak door that bars entry to the war room belies its acoustic conductivity — the words of the conversation inside are only partially discernible, but the rising inflections of what is clearly an argument filter through well enough. Margo strains her ears, slightly unnerved to realize they actually move with the effort.

"... not seen any enemy movements, Leliana..."

"... Venatori, yes, but ..."

"... expected if we consider Redcliffe..."

"... terrible timing..."

"Wait here," Margo and Dorian's guide orders. He knocks — three rapid raps, a pause, then one more strike. The voices grow quiet. Margo and Dorian exchange a look, but there is no time for any elaborate nonverbal communication. The door swings open. Instead of admitting them inside, Torquemada steps across the threshold and gestures at Dorian.

"Lord Pavus. The Commander requires your expertise. Some questions have come up regarding your compatriots. I trust you will assist?"

Dorian's eyes narrow, and beneath the sardonic smirk Margo catches a glimpse of unease. "I will strive not to disappoint." He hesitates, then turns. "My dear, I shall seek you out later to continue our conversation. Should I call on you at the apothecary once again?" There is an undercurrent to his question, one that is very clearly directed at the spymaster herself.

"Mistress Duvalle will no doubt be at her post. There is much work to be done, and very little time to do it."

With that, Dorian proceeds inside with one last sympathetic look at of joining the remaining Three Footmen of the Apocalypse, Torquemada shuts the door and waves her hand at the silent scout, who pivots on his heels and stalks off down the colonnade.

"Follow me." The spymaster doesn't wait for an acknowledgement. Margo trails after her with the grim certainty that she is about the become reacquainted with Torquemada's interrogation chambers, but the former bard takes a sharp left instead, leading them down the hallways to the chantry's nave. Margo frowns. Whatever this is, it cannot possibly end well.

The cavernous hall is deserted, save for one lonely sweeper — an elderly elf clothed in threadbare, discolored robes pushes a broom around with a quiet shuff shuff shuff . Torquemada proceeds to a small alcove, and Margo follows her to the foot of the sword-and-shield wielding stone maiden that looms menacingly from the unsteady shadows.

The spymaster lowers herself into the lone pew and gestures for Margo to take a seat beside her. "I had hoped this would not become necessary, but at this stage, I fear inaction is the more harmful approach." Her voice is muffled by the acoustics of the narrow space. Margo swallows a wave of rising terror — she is really beginning to develop a Pavlovian reflex to Comrade Nightingale, and not of the pleasantly anticipatory variety, either.

Leliana turns, her face in three-quarter profile oddly soft in the flickering candlelight. The skin around her eyes looks thinner, the crow's-feet more deeply grooved. The cinnamon-colored strands that escape her hood flash with new silver. "I terrify you, don't I?" she muses. There is neither sadness nor glee in the tone, only a quiet sort of resignation.

"Most of the time, yes," Margo hedges. No point in insulting Torquemada's intelligence with unconvincing bravado. Silence descends upon them, nothing to break it but the faraway scraping of a broom against the stones.

"I would have you look at something." Leliana makes no move to follow up on this declaration of intent, and Margo forces herself not to fidget on the hard pew. At length, the spymaster releases a breath. "I have little taste for theatrics these days. Suffice it to say, what you will see is revealed in utmost confidence." She cuts Margo a steely look. "Under no circumstances will you share it. Is this clear?"

"Abundantly so," Margo retorts, more dryly that she was aiming for. Torquemada's alleged tastes for theater notwithstanding, the threat is perfectly effective.

"Good."

The journal she is handed is like nothing she has seen this side of the Breach. It is pocket-size, with a supple, fine-grained leather binding. The pages are actual paper — a little uneven around the edges, but smooth and creamy, with a pleasant heft to them.

Margo casts a questioning look at the spymaster. "May I ask what I'm looking at?"

"A memento. One I had expected to take with me to the pyre, if it came down to that."

Margo hesitates. There is such desolation in Leliana's voice that for one uncanny moment she almost reaches out to put a reassuring hand on the woman's shoulder. She remembers herself quickly and instead taps the cover with an open palm. "Why... me?"

"I suspect it will become self-explanatory once you look. And if it does not, then we will simply forget this entire conversation, and you will pretend it never happened."

Right. Need-to-know basis. Some things never change. "Anything specific I should be looking at?"

Torquemada smiles pleasantly — the bard's mask is back on, as impenetrable as the glossy face coverings Margo has seen on the occasional Orlesian visitors to Haven. "I would have you leaf through the entirety of it, if you would. They are drawings, mostly. You should not find it too taxing."

Margo stifles a grim chuckle. What better way to hide the important parts than to shove them into a haystack of irrelevance. Either that, or Comrade Nightingale is staging yet another test. Or, likely, both.

She cracks open the journal.

The pages are filled with sketches. Graphite, the occasional charcoal, some ink. Predominantly portraits, interspersed with the odd landscape. Whoever the artist was, the style is confident yet unique, a half-step past realism, edging towards abstraction. Bold lines that capture expressions and poses perfectly, in a laconic economy of form. The first volley of drawings are of people — a man with a rueful smile but eyes that seem sad and faraway. A woman — a striking, pale brunette — with a haughty expression, but a smirk lurking at the corners of her mouth. Another man — his features just a tad off to be fully human — is drawn in profile, his forehead resting against the hilt of a two-handed sword.

Margo turns the pages slowly, committing the faces to memory. An elf — not classically handsome, exactly, but sharply attractive — fixes the viewer with a knowing, slightly ironic look. Devilish little sparks dance in his eyes.

She freezes at the next illustration. Leliana, softer, gentler, with the roundness of youth still in her cheeks smiles from the page with such naked, unadorned trust that Margo finds herself fighting off vague embarrassment. The other Leliana, the one sitting next to her, remains silent and still, as emotionless and aloof as the statue before them.

What happened to you?

She notices Leliana's gaze on her. "You and the artist were close," Margo observes cautiously, just to say something. She regrets it immediately.

"We were. And before you ask, no, we were not lovers. Intimacy is not always a factor of whom one takes to one's bed."

Margo prudently doesn't comment and returns her attention to the pages. She comes across several landscapes — quick drawings, with small inscriptions at the bottom, which she deduces are place names. A small village with a crumbling structure at the back suspiciously reminiscent of an aqueduct. A tower that juts out of a moonlit lake, ominous. More sketches of people. Scenes of weary, road-tested companionship. A warrior sharpening a blade. An older human woman with a severe bun but a kind face and a dwarf with a spectacular beard are saluting each other over a toast.

As the pages progress, there are more and more sketches of the striking brunette, always with that small, cryptic smile tucked into the corner of her full lips. A few are nudes — never explicit, but something about the woman's captured expression leaves little doubt as to the nature of the relationship between her and the artist.

And then, Margo turns the page and draws in a sharp breath. She feels the ground shift from under her in a ripple of queasy vertigo, the sudden shock like a jolt of electricity to the soles of her feet. On the left page is an iconic city skyline, the twin towers of the World Trade Center like two giant incisors at the focal point of the sketch. And then, on the right, the same towers, folding in on themselves in a chaos of smoke and flame, concrete debris crumbling in a monstrous waterfall.

"What...?" Margo asks through numb lips.

Torquemada is staring at her, an avid edge to her attention. "I see that you recognize it," she offers, but does not elaborate, letting the pause hang.

When Margo lifts her finger to tap the image on the left, her hand does not feel like her own. She supposes that it technically isn't. "This... from my world." She swallows. Apparently, her mouth has forgotten how to form full sentences. "But what is this?" There. That's more sentence-like. She points to the page where chaos reigns.

Leliana lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "By the time this journal came into my possession, there was no one to ask for clarification. Is this image not familiar?"

Margo shakes her head. "No. They added a third tower in '08 or '09, if that matters, but... Nothing like this ever happened."

Torquemada remains silent, her face tilted towards the indifferent granite of the shield-maiden. "I have spoken to you of Alim before, have I not?"

"The Hero of Ferelden," Margo breathes. Her stomach attempts to retreat somewhere in the general direction of her heels. Oh, Void on a stick. "This was his, wasn't it?"

Leliana fails to answer. Instead, she clasps her hands in her lap, the gesture a shade away from prayer. "Alim devised a game of sorts, to pass the time as we traveled. He called it "how far would you go." The premise was simple — if you knew something catastrophic would occur, what would you be willing to do to prevent it? He'd offer a scenario and let you talk through it. He was very good at imagining unintended consequences." She hesitates, eyes unseeing, trained on the past. "He liked to joke that it was to prepare Alistair for kingship. Of course, he never did intend to put Alistair on the throne — but I did not know that at the time. No, I think he wanted to see where each of us would draw the line. Maybe he was hoping for absolution." The former bard shakes off the memories with a visible effort. "Do you understand why I showed you these, Mistress Duvalle?"

Margo closes the journal with one last uneasy look at the New York City skyline. "If my guess is correct, then your friend and I might share an origin story. Although his world... It would appear that his world is not the same as mine."

Leliana nods slowly. "When I discovered what you were, I remembered this drawing. Alim complained of strange dreams. Odd visions. Bizarre nightmares that did not have the Bligh at their root. Most often he would burn whatever drawings came of these, but a few remain. For a long time I attributed their eccentricity to whatever magic afforded him a glimpse of the future."

Torquemada extends her hand, and Margo returns the journal, smothering the sudden, irrational urge to stuff it into her pocket, and bound off, Gollum-like, in a random direction. Preciousssss .

"Would you mind if I asked you something?" Margo ventures.

The former bard chuckles. "Save your breath, Mistress Duvalle. No. I never suspected what he was, not until you came along. How could I? I am still not sure whether my guess is correct — perhaps his visions simply extended far afield. There are many things about the Fade I do not pretend to understand."

Margo mulls it over, formulating. It probably won't do any good to point out that she already surmised that, whomever this Alim was, he hadn't shared the nature of his secrets with Torquemada. Maybe that's what set her on the path towards "Inquisiting."

"The catastrophe he wished to prevent. The one that required the creation of the ward over Haven... Are you quite sure it was the Breach?"

Leliana considers the question with an expression that makes Margo conclude that this particular thought train is one the spymaster has ridden before. "If you had asked me this prior to this conversation, I would have been inclined to dismiss such possibilities." She smiles darkly. "But we are all too ready to defend those we domesticate, don't you find? Anything that will keep at bay the suspicion of monstrosity. It is why I am so very fond of the Orlesian tradition of donning masks. Much more honest when the promise of corruption is only one layer of lovely porcelain away." She tucks the journal into her coat. "It is why I have called you here. Ironic, is it not, that you would be the one with whom I can divide this burden."

Margo's mind churns on itself, calculating the possibilities. She quickly represses a vision of Solas, his body riddled with the awful red mineral, crumpling to the floor like a broken marionette. Instead, she formulates her next question, crafting it carefully. It does her no good. "Did Alim predict an attack on Haven?" she blurts out. Apparently, her mouth is not taking orders from central. "Because I noticed we seem to be preparing for something, and not just celebrating Evie closing the Breach, should she succeed."

The spymaster exhales softly, and for a second there is none of her usual quiet menace — only an exhausted, aging woman carrying the weight of an unraveling world. "You are observant," she says at length.

"You can't use this, can you? To convince the others to evacuate?"

Leliana shakes her head once. "And reveal that the man who ended the Fifth Blight was likely something we do not have a concept for? No, agent, I cannot."

Margo tries — and fails — to keep the urgency out of her voice, but when she speaks, her words wobble. "What did he foresee? Are you certain his predictions were accurate? Maybe your friend was wrong."

"The Breach was not the only thing he had anticipated correctly. But I am beginning to suspect that he was circumspect about which truths he chose to share." Leliana sighs. "There is one more thing I would query you on. Another parting gift of his, if you will — if you would indulge me. Are you fond of poetry, Mistress Duvalle?"

"Depends on the poetry," Margo retorts, suddenly suspicious.

"Then I wish that my younger self had your discernment."

When Leliana speaks again, it is with the tinkling lushness of her bardic voice.

"For all we have and are,  
For all our children's fate,  
Stand up and take the war.  
The Enemy's at the gate!  
Our world has passed away,  
The Blight within our bone.  
There is nothing left to-day  
But steel and fire and stone!  
Though all we knew depart,  
Andraste's words must stand:—  
"In courage kept your heart,  
In strength lift up your hand."

Once more we hear the word  
That sickened world of old:—  
"No law except the Sword  
Unsheathed and uncontrolled."  
Once more it knits our kind,  
Once more the nations go  
To meet and break and bind  
A crazed and driven foe.

Comfort, content, delight,  
The ages' slow-bought gain,  
They shrivelled in a night.  
Only ourselves remain  
To face the naked days  
In silent fortitude,  
Through perils and dismays  
Renewed and re-renewed.  
Though all we made depart,  
Andraste's words must stand:—  
"In patience keep your heart,  
In strength lift up your hand."

No easy hope or lies  
Shall bring us to our goal,  
But iron sacrifice  
Of body, will, and soul.  
There is but one task for all—  
One life for each to give.  
What stands if this world fall?  
Who dies if this world live?"

It is so utterly surreal to hear Rudyard Kipling's verses fall from the spymaster's lips that for a second Margo almost forgets where she is.

"Ah. You are familiar with it." Not a question.

Margo just nods. Her mouth has grown bone-dry, the tingle of terror scuttling down her spine. "It's not his. He tweaked the words," she says quietly.

Leliana says nothing for a long time. And then, something rearranges, and the steely mask is back on. "Thank you, Mistress Duvalle, for this enlightening conversation. I shan't keep you any longer. I suspect you have potions to make."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by existential questions, such as... is this (this, right here) the dark timeline?_

 _Next up: some pharmaceutical experiments; and finally! Closing the Breach_

 _As always, a million thanks for reading and leaving your thoughts. I appreciate every single review! I'm terribly sorry those of you who leave comments as guests that I can't easily write back on this platform, but know that your notes are enormously appreciated._

 _I know it's been a slow build-up to this, but finally I can offer you some (very partial) answers before this train derails for good. I hope you enjoyed the little reveal._


	79. Chapter 79: Half the Victory

_In which things go as planned, for once. Don't get used to it._

* * *

Outside, the wind howls, buffeting Haven's buildings with tiny abrasive shards — the ice crystals like sand caught in desert winds. Through the clouds, the alien sun slants its rays, the hue one shade wrong, sickly orange as if dispersed through too many atmospheric particulates. Margo stuffs her hands into her pockets, hunches her shoulders, and trudges back to the apothecary, fresh snow creaking under her boots. Haven as she knows it is endless winter. She tries to shove Leliana's revelations beneath the long-abused rug, but the sanity-saving decor has developed a defense mechanism and mutated into a wall-to-wall carpet. The Hero of Ferelden refuses to turn into a mite and fit beneath it — instead, his figure looms larger than life, a colossus on a horizon already populated by too many abominations.

"Who were you?" Margo mumbles, the question — which is quickly becoming a bad habit — coalescing into a cloud of vapor. It hovers unresolved.

What did his drawing of the mangled New York skyline mean? Was this some personal nightmare or fear? Or is the universe even more batshit crazy than she expected, and the whole pop theory of bifurcating quantum possibilities isn't just some New Age nonsense but is actually grounded in truth? And, if so, then what next? Are there millions of Margos, generated at every fork in the road? Are they multiplying even now, right at this moment, each time she takes a step or draws a breath? Is there, right now, another Margo who decided to go towards the tavern instead of the apothecary, and her life, from there, branched off into another limb on the monstrous tree of infinite possibilities?

Is this what her world's many shamanic traditions meant with their visions of the always suspiciously dendritic axis mundi ? Is this the Tree of which Baba speaks? And is there a Margo to whom none of this happened — one who is writing her lecture, or quietly seething over the asinine and unhelpful feedback an anonymous reviewer left on her latest manuscript? One who is having a coffee with a colleague, or distractedly watching a show while cooking dinner?

She hopes the cat's ok. And Jake. Maybe there is a version of her somewhere where all of them are fine.

And one where Lily gets to grow up.

Then again, there are likely an infinite number of versions where everything is even worse.

Margo grumbles a medley of multilingual expletives, mostly in the hope that they might drown out the anxious head chatter. She somehow manages to herd her attention back to the present immediate — before her thoughts scatter into the foothills, bleating senselessly. The world is all that is the case. Perhaps this is something to bother Amund about next time they have a spare moment. Either way, in the absence of The National Hero to conveniently explicate his motivations and conditions of arrival, this is all moot speculation.

She can almost feel the hollow darkness of Leliana's resigned grief, fed by the impossibility of getting answers. It casts the spymaster in a new light — the ghostly absence lurks at the edges of every word, the solvent to her sentences, a shadowed reminder of the things Torquemada became under the murky guidance of another. One more cosmic horror, one more puppet master with aims unknown.

Margo will need to be cautious. Even without the poorly disguised threat from Leliana about not spilling the beans, it is plain enough that this information is a potential powder keg. Not to mention that it seems that The National Hero was nothing if not unambiguous. Maybe there is a convenient epic about the fellow lying around somewhere. Does Thedas have epics?

She refines her original question. Who were you, and what were you playing at?

By the time Margo returns to the apothecary, the mental buzzing has subsided to manageable levels. Clemence greets her with a neutral, "Welcome back, Apprentice Duvalle," and returns to pouring a clear, viscous liquid into small clay pots with meticulous slowness. Margo files a mental prayer with whomever is on listening duty that this is not nitroglycerin.

The Tranquil has company. Both Minaeve and Adan are bent over the alchemy station, their foreheads almost close enough to touch. Margo has the strong suspicion that they are in the midst of a long-standing disagreement. They pay her entrance absolutely no heed.

"— not stabilized properly." Adan's voice is even gruffer than usual. "It won't disperse unless..."

"Yes, I can see that well enough, Adan, I told you a water solvent won't work!"

Margo clears her throat. The senior alchemist casts a look over his shoulder, gestures for her to come closer, and returns to his work. "The errant pupil. Come contribute. I have this idea..."

"An absolutely nonsensical one we've wasted this last month on," Minaeve butts in dryly.

"And yet, here you are, enchanter," Adan grins through his beard. "Still."

Wait. Is this why Adan is routinely in absentia? He has been working with Minaeve on some ill-advised alchemical experiment? Margo surveys the ingredients laid out on the table. She frowns. "Master Adan, are you trying to bring your love of grenades to the art of healing?"

The grin takes on an alarmingly gleeful edge. "Brilliant, isn't it? I kept thinking, what if we could heal at a distance? And then I remembered the tale of your and Pavus's shenanigans in the Hinterlands with that blood lotus extract dispersal — Harding's account was colorful, I'll give her that. And from there..."

"Adan insists on a water-based solution, and I am telling him that this will not work."

"With a stabilized fire essence that activates on impact, it would."

"You can't put a rune in every grenade, Adan, it's cost-prohibitive!"

Clemence lifts his head from his work. "I agree with Enchanter Minaeve, with a caveat. Between lyrium and the costs of demon essence, such a preparation would necessarily be limited. At the same time, such a thing might change the course of a battle. I would suggest we test the alcohol solution first and examine the results."

Adan squints at the two detractors with open annoyance. "Alcohol will evaporate too fast — it won't suspend as a mist." He harrumphs. "But it would be cheaper to test. We'll need assistance."

Two pairs of eyes scrutinize Margo with new, unhealthy interest. "Not it!" she stammers. Last time these two were testing formulas on her, she got saddled with Imshael.

The two bastards — red-headed and otherwise — look at each other, and then just nod. "We won't test it on you." Minaeve's smile is creepily friendly. "Quite the contrary, in fact. What we need is someone to do the testing."

The hardest part of talking Sera into the ill-conceived scheme is tracking down the elven archer in the first place. Margo eventually finds her on the roof of Master Harritt's hut. Sera is sitting cross-legged on a coarse piece of felt, no doubt pilfered from one of the tents. Her back is propped against the warm bricks of the chimney. By the time Margo manages to climb up, Sera is brushing crumbs from her leggings, and trying to chew through an enormous mouthful of cookies.

"Nofin' lef'," she announces by way of a warning.

Margo prudently gives up on the project of scaling the icy roof all the way to its crest and instead adopts her shit-eatingest grin. "Sera? How would you like to conduct an experiment?"

Her explanation of the intended use of the formula is schematic at best, but Sera takes it well-enough in stride. "Toss it and see if it droplets. Got it."

"Is 'droplet' a verb in Common?" Margo inquires with genuine interest.

"Should be, right? Made of two already. Anyway, is now." Sera grins and uses the piece of felt to toboggan down the slanted roof, flips in mid-air, and catches herself on the ledge before jumping down. Margo descends, albeit less spectacularly.

Assistant recruited, she sets off to acquire tests subjects. This too proves alarmingly easy. They spot Blackwall in the sparring grounds, running a half-dozen recruits through sword-and-shield drills. Iron Bull observes from a nearby crate and offers occasional "encouraging" commentary of the growling persuasion. The lot of them appear distracted, to put it mildly. Heads turn towards the Breach at regular intervals — a collective movement with the mysterious contagiousness of a yawn. The Hellmouth remains profoundly unaltered by this scrutiny and keeps on swirling ponderously.

"How much longer, you figure?" Sera bites at a nail.

The Great Bearded Ursus takes a break from mentoring the new generation in his efficiently murderous ways. He rakes his fingers through his hair to get the sweaty strands out of his face, then proceeds to tie it back into a loose knot with a piece of leather cord. He dismisses the younger recruits with, "Good show, soldiers." When the Warden turns to face their questionable research team, his eyes are pinched at the corners in worry, but his body language remains studiously casual. "They started late. With the snowdrifts, it would've taken some time to get to the temple with a group that size."

Margo quirks an eyebrow. The underlying meaning, for all its reassuring packaging, does not inspire optimism. "Do you think something went wrong?" she asks, as neutrally as she can.

"I've not seen any changes in the blighted thing. If it'd gone wrong, we'd know it."

Sera squints at the sky. "Should be done soon, then, yeah?"

Bull stands up from his crate and drifts to their little group. "What are those, Blondie? Bit larger than the standard stuff Adan makes. New grenade?"

Margo extracts one of the three prototypes from the vial holder Adan equipped her with. "As a matter of fact, it is. Master Adan wants it tested."

"What does it do?"

Sera grins brilliantly. "'S a surprise?"

Margo shoots her a dirty look. "It's supposed to produce a mist that heals you on impact."

"Heals, or kills ?" Blackwall asks with a suspicious glance at the brilliant green liquid sloshing around in its glass container.

"You need volunteers?" Bull rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck, and Margo decides that the Qunari is looking for a distraction from contemplating the delay in the world-saving efforts. She wonders if she should make them sign a waiver. She decides to settle for verbal consent instead. "I'm not sure it'll work as intended," she cautions. "Are you sure you're up for this?"

"Beats sitting on our arses and waiting for the sky to close," Blackwall shrugs.

"Damn right. Fists or swords, big guy?"

The first grenade — as should have been expected — does not produce any discernible effects, safe for splashing the participants in a viscous, sticky liquid that fills the air with the unmistakable smell of peppermint schnapps.

"Do you feel any changes?" Margo asks, raising her voice above the steady stream of taunts the opponents exchange. The grappling match is entertaining enough that it attracted a small audience of loiterers, all too happy to shirk their duties — and ignore the green swirling elephant in the room.

"Yes. Now I'm sticky," Bull volunteers, right before attempting to lift Blackwall off his feet and pitch him into the snow — only to get an elbow to his ribs for the effort. There are some enthusiastic jeers from the onlookers.

"Well. We do have a baseline," Margo trails, trying to count how many bruises the Qunari collected. Do they seem to be fading? Or is that just the effect of the light. "We can just compare —"

"What d'ya call it, 'Phase 2.' Got an idea. Toss it over them, will you?" Sera readies her bow, to Margo's horrified realization of what the archer intends. "Just high, 'cause glass."

"This is a bad idea," Margo protests.

"Best kind, that. Now toss."

Margo lobs the grenade in a neat parabola. Somewhere, a universe away, an IRB is having an apoplectic fit. A bowstring creaks and releases with a sharp twang, air whistles, and at the apex of its arc the grenade bursts into a million fragments, precipitating in a spray of glass and minty liquid. The experimental subjects interrupt their mutual bashing long enough to brush the residue from hair and horns. Bull takes a sniff.

"Is that Abyssal Mint , Blondie?" Bull asks, his good eye widening in incredulity. "Let me see that last one you got."

"Is that a capitulation, Bull?" Blackwall does not step out of his fighting stance, in case the Qunari is staging a distraction.

"Pass it over, Blondie."

Margo narrows her eyes suspiciously. "It's meant to be applied topically, Bull. No drinking the... um... grenades."

Bull steps out of the rink, appropriates the last bottle, uncorks it, and — exactly as predicted — takes a hearty swig. "Yup. Abyssal Mint. Bit herbal, though."

Not one to lose a research opportunity, Margo gives him a critical once-over. "How are you feeling?"

He doesn't get a chance to answer. She hears it before her eyes register the change. A strange, muffled keen at a frequency almost beyond human perception, and then Margo's head turns on automatic, attention caught on a brilliant flash of green at the horizon. A beam, blindingly white at its core, pierces the swirling vortex and pools at the center of the Breach into a vibrating orb of crackling energy, a giant cluster of lime-colored ball lightning. Margo sucks in a breath, the burst of adrenaline telling her body to flee, to hide, to find cover, futile as it might be. And then, with a sonic boom, the energy dissipates in a monstrous ripple that, for a brief moment, warps the sky from horizon to horizon in a centrifugal shockwave. For a second or two, Margo waits to be obliterated, a speck caught in the radius of a hydrogen bomb.

When she finally opens her eyes, the Hellmouth is no more.

"Pass me that, will you?" Blackwall's voice cracks. Bull hands him the grenade-turned-libation without a word, which the Warden accepts with a nod. He takes a gulp, his eyes still fixed on the skies.

"Get to have fun now, yeah?" Sera asks.

As if on cue, wild cheers erupt all around them, then domino through the village in a matching shockwave of pure, unadulterated joy.

Margo is jolted out of her stupor by a hearty slap on the back. "Well, Blondie. Your potion doesn't work for shit, but it tastes decent, at least."

She looks up at Bull. "What happens now, in your opinion?"

Bull hesitates. His expression remains jovial and perfectly relaxed — but also entirely too still. He lets his gaze drift, and Margo follows its direction. The cart she spotted being loaded earlier is now at full capacity. A couple of men — she's not sure whose they are — are hitching two druffalo to the cart's yoke, barely sparing any glances to the miracle of the sealed skies.

"Guess we wait for the crew to come back," the Qunari offers.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Abyssal Peach, which is one of the bottles you can collect. Now also in new flavors! (Stay away from the watermelon one, though)._

Next up: The other half of victory.


	80. Chapter 80: In Vino Veritas

_In which the mice play, and the cat isn't around yet._

* * *

The apothecary reeks of rotten eggs. Either Adan and Minaeve are messing around with something sulphurous, or closing the Breach simultaneously opened a nearby portal to Hell, a thermal spring, or both.

The Terrible Two receive the results of the not particularly random and certainly not at all controlled pharmaceutical trial with admirable poise. Adan's shrug is downright philosophical. Minaeve barely looks up from her task of slowly stirring a dark, unpleasantly glossy substance inside a cast-iron cauldron that simmers over the hearth.

Even Margo's final bad news — "I'm afraid they self-administered the remaining prototype internally, Master Adan" — garners little more than a short snort of amusement.

"Well, then. Let's see if there are any interesting effects by tomorrow." Adan motions with his beard in the general direction of the Cauldron of Unpleasant Ooze — a substance likely known in more technical circles as a balsam, but Margo decides that it has yet to earn this more noble title. "Trade out with Minaeve for a bit, lass. Keep stirring it, and try not to breathe in the vapors." He squints skeptically. "You're peculiar enough without adding deathroot fumes into the mix."

Margo eyes the pot. She can guess what's expected of her well enough — it's standard evaporation used to concentrate the solids in the plant extract. It occurs to her that the deathroot has likely earned its ominous moniker not from whatever entheogenic alkaloids it might contain, but from its less than commendable olfactory properties. She pulls her scarf over her nose. "What are we cooking?"

Minaeve hands Margo the wooden spatula with an expression of rueful relief, and then she quickly retreats towards the desk, where a row of flasks is waiting to be turned into explosive devices. Margo assumes her post by the hearth.

Adan, bent over a ledger, is meticulously crossing out lines with an exceptionally squeaky quill. "Maker knows why the Nightingale wants this many pitch grenades at this stage." For a few seconds he remains silent. And then, incongruously, he drops his quil into the inkpot, straightens, and guffaws — a bark of resonant incredulity so unexpected Margo almost loses her spatula to the viscous ooze. She wrestles it back at the last moment, and stares at Adan in alarm.

"By Andraste, it's over, isn't it? The Herald actually closed the blighted thing."

Later, Margo will remember the look that passes between the three of them. The glow of giddy, exuberant hope glimmers then fades too quickly, dampened by the suspicion of trickery.

"I suppose we have a few hours before they return victorious and the festivities begin," Minaeve offers. She wipes her hands on a rag, and lowers herself into a chair with obvious relief. "The pitch shouldn't take much longer."

"Let's get these done," Adan nods. "Got a bottle I've been keeping for a special occasion."

Minaeve's optimistic temporal estimations notwithstanding, by the time the flasks are filled with tar the sky outside has turned dark. Margo scrapes off the last dregs of the foul-smelling ooze into a porcelain beaker and ferries it off to the desk. Her head swims slightly — not inhaling the vapors proved easier said than done, even with the windows fully open.

Once the last flask is stoppered, Adan rummages underneath the workstation. He extracts what can only be described as an amphora sealed with a glob of greenish wax. Minaeve brings three mismatched glasses to the desk.

Margo's attempt to perch atop a crate is interrupted by Adan's indignant holler. "Mind the new cucurbit, fledgling! They don't grow on trees, you know." He pushes a rickety stool in her direction with the tip of his boot. "I'll personally send you to Serault — on foot — if you squash it."

Margo offers an apologetic nod and plants her behind on the offered stool. "Are we getting all of our glass from Serault, then?" She eyes the crate and its apparently precious contents with greedy curiosity. Does this Serault have a monopoly on glassblowing? Surely, the dwarves must have their own glassworks — in her own world, the technique is ancient.

Minaeve snorts, rather good-naturedly for once. Adan just shakes his head. "Don't be absurd, lass, of course not. I'm struggling to keep us supplied with the basics — you think we'd be able to afford a full collection of Serault glass? Alchemical grade Serault glass?" He peels the wax seal off with a pocket knife. "No, this one was a gift from one of the ambassador's admirers, I suspect. Now, this should be a pretty decent Carnal. Courtesy of Commander Cullen, so color me grateful."

While Margo tries to decide whether " In Vino Veritas " should be considered an encouragement or a warning, Adan pours a measure of the pale golden liquid into the three receptacles. The drink is a strong, fruity liqueur, with a nose that mixes raspberry and embrium.

Task complete and libations supplied, the alchemist leans back on his chair and kicks his feet up on the workstation before extracting a worn wooden pipe from the folds of his robe. The mixture he packs into the bowl layers the air with the scents of licorice and cloves — and some other, unfamiliar, pungent aroma. One way or another, an improvement over the hydrogen sulfide.

Minaeve rolls her fingers together until a miniature fireball stretches and globulizes between them. "In need of assistance, Master Adan?" she asks. There is a faint trace of something mischievous in her voice.

Adan grunts, extends the pipe in the enchanter's general direction, and clears his throat unnecessarily.

Margo bites back a chuckle, and raises her glass. "To the Breach being closed?"

"And to it staying closed, Maker willing," the alchemist grumbles.

"I'll gladly drink to both, but the Herald's work is far from done. Many rifts remain." Minaeve's brow crinkles in worry, but she chases the emotion down with a sip of cordial.

Adan frowns. "What's got you stewing, enchanter?" The thick layer of gruffness doesn't quite conceal the note of concern.

"I..." The elf shoots Margo a dubious look, but then her shoulders fall, and she exhales sharply, nostrils flaring. "You know I do not hold any hatred towards the templars..." She trails off and takes another swallow of cordial.

Margo looks between Adan and the enchanter, trying to decipher the underlying currents of meaning. The animosity the templars hold towards mages doesn't exactly require advanced microscopy to detect, if Evie's show trial was anything to go by. How seriously does the Order take the task of protecting mages from themselves, exactly — especially when afforded the privacy of the proverbial total institution? Genitivi described the Circles as a place of learning and safety for magically inclined Theodosians, but there must be a reason why the good brother has such a monopoly on local history. Before Margo can give Genitivi's hypothetical financial backers proper consideration — her money is on the local version of the Vatican — Adan sets his drink on the table with a firm thud.

"Yeah, I know. I know." He puffs on his pipe and exhales a cloud of clove-laced smoke, looking every bit like a small but unaccommodating Goth dragon temporarily stuck in human form. "They're going to be drunk as piss, and there's a lot of 'em. Tell your... charges to stay indoors over the next three days, or however long the Ambassador plans to extend the celebrations for."

"Three days? " It's not exactly what Margo means to ask, but the words rush ahead of the other thought. What charges does Minaeve have? Are there baby mages stashed away somewhere in Haven?

Adan lifts a shoulder in a shrug, making the gesture look at once incredulous and resigned. "Three full days off for everyone. I already told Clemence to go join the rest of the Tranquil in the chantry, so here's to hoping he'll be safe enough. It'll be madder than a rabbid fennec around here until Flissa's wine runs dry. Then — mark my words — they'll come sniffing around the apothecary. As if I'd let Cullen's knuckleheads, let alone the rest of the assorted riffraff the Herald picked up at Therinfal, get their paws on alchemy-grade spirits."

"Is there some danger to the Tranquil, specifically?" Margo asks, her stomach constricting into a leaden ball around the sip of liquor. The sudden vertigo has little to do with the drink — or the fumes.

Her question is greeted with an awkward silence.

"Where did you say you were from again, lass?"

Margo swallows. "Nevarra, originally." The lie no longer tastes bitter — in fact, it doesn't taste like anything at all. Perhaps, on one branch of the monstrous tree, this statement is true.

In the silence, the quiet crackling of Adan's pipe sounds downright deafening. Minaeve's eyes dart to Margo and linger on her for an uncomfortable few seconds, but, finally, the enchanter nods. "I would imagine it is different with the Mortalitasi so close to the seat of power. Besides, this sort of thing does not happen in every Circle."

Adan's gaze drifts to the inky square of the window, the mica pane too opaque to throw back any recognizable reflection. "Soldiers are soldiers, apprentice. How they behave when they let off steam depends on whose command they're under. Cullen's got most of his people in check, give or take, but..." He pauses, draws on his pipe, and blows a smoke ring that drifts slowly towards the ceiling until, caught in the draft from the partially open door, it scrambles and melts in the air. "The ones from Therinfal are a mixed bag. Some familiar faces from Kirkwall, if Master Tethras isn't mistaken."

The patchwork of knowledge gleaned from books and scattered conversations congeals into a particularly bleak picture, and Margo hides a wince. She remembers perfectly well how easily Solas, Dorian, and Bull dismissed her concern for Clemence and his brethren in Redcliffe. For all their differences, none of them seemed to think that Tranquil lives were worth the extra legwork. And she remembers Solas's bitter expression when the topic of Evie's potential tranquilization was broached. A fate one wouldn't wish even on an enemy, indeed.

"So... the Tranquil are easy pickings." It's not a question.

The enchanter's lips fold into a hard line. She takes a small sip of cordial before shaking her head once. "Here, they will not be."

The door squeaks. Lord Pavus of the Impeccable Timing materializes in the opening, fresh snowflakes glinting in his hair and catching the tawny glow of the brazier. "So this is where you've b—... Oh." He looks between the three of them. "I sense a remarkable — and altogether suspicious — lack of vivaciousness. You are aware the Breach is closed, yes?" He knocks the snow off his boots before stepping inside. "Is that Carnal I spy? And yet you are successfully maintaining funereal faces." His lips twitch in a nascent smirk, but he manages to maintain a straight face. "Allow me to guess. The price of goose shit is taxing the Inquisition's coffers? No, no, wait. You are drawing straws over who will clean the calcinator?"

Adan's expression switches quickly from unease to his usual gruffness. "The conversation strayed, Pavus. We're as cheerful as a tinker on Satinalia."

"Are southern tinkers a particularly dismal lot? By all means, do not let me interrupt your gloomy contemplation of... whatever it was that the three of you gloomily contemplate."

"As if we could stop you." Adan gestures towards the last plausible seating surface — the bottom of the stairs to the loft. "What brings his lordship to our humble shop?"

"I have never seen you actually sell anything, Adan. I was under the impression that, as far as the Inquisition is concerned, the procurement of goods and services is of the commandeered variety." Instead of taking the offered seat, Dorian wanders towards the shelf of beakers and selects one that could, after a few glasses of the cordial, pass for a goblet.

"Give me that." Adan grabs the offered receptacle and measures out a painstakingly reasonable amount of booze before handing it back to the mage. "Is Flissa out of wine already?"

Dorian's eyes glint with amusement. "Not yet, but I am certain this will be remedied in no time. Why are you three ensconced in here, exactly? You are about to miss the Victorious Return."

Adan takes a slow drag from his pipe. He squints at the mage through the bluish smoke. "Some of us work."

"A task from which we are strongly discouraged for the next three days, I hear." Dorian takes an exploratory sip of the liqueur. "Ah, a perfectly adequate beverage, for a change. What about you, Mistress Duvalle? Shall we join the rest of the beatific spectators outside?" Beneath the smirk, an unasked question lurks.

Margo offers a tight smile in return. With any luck, Dorian will want to resume his discussion of Evie's unusual magical properties, and not embark on a fishing expedition about Torquemada's — and now Margo's — little secret. "If Master Adan and Enchanter Minaeve can spare me." When in doubt, suck up.

Adan just waves his hand in disgust. "Go. The grenades need to cool before we store them. Just... be cautious, too. It will get rowdy around here, mark my words. Mind yourself, lass."

Margo pulls on her coat and leaves the sulphurous hut to the Dismal Duo.

"What did I miss?" Dorian asks as they make their way down towards the village center. Margo fails to respond. Her eyes are fixed on the skies — it is the first time the stars above Haven are plainly visible, luminous clusters shimmering in the void. Her eyes water from the strain and icy air. Echoes of worlds long gone.

Perhaps her own, too.

"Incredible now that the Breach is no longer dyeing everything green, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Margo nods, not trusting herself with a longer utterance.

When Dorian speaks again, his voice is gentle. "I would imagine your skies look much different." He loops his arms through hers and covers her gloveless hand with the wide sleeve of his ornate winter cloak. "I have yet to encounter a cure for nostalgia, but I find that wine and reasonably good company go a long way."

In the span of the previous few hours, Haven was transformed. In lieu of Seggritt's stall of shitty merchandise, an enormous bonfire crackles in the center of the courtyard — with any luck, powered by the merchandise in question. The streets are crowded. The civilians — workers, craftsmen, merchants, many of them with their families — move between the food stalls managed by a few of Flissa's kitchen maids. Makeshift tables are piled high with the sort of winter festival foods that keep the belly filled and the fingers reasonably clean.

Further down, another bonfire serves as the center of gravity for the military contingent. Voices already loosened with drink mix with the clanking of armor to drift on the night air. The tavern is roaring with noise: slightly dissonant fast-paced fiddling spills from the open windows, along with the din of laughter, clapping, and rhythmic foot-stomping.

"Prickly, Sparkler!" Next to his tent, Varric is presiding over a game of cards of truly epic proportions — one that has already sucked Bull and some of the Chargers into its vortex. "Come lose some coin!"

Dorian shoots a look at Bull, then looks askance at Margo, torn between curiosity and another compulsion.

"Go. I know you want to talk about the spymaster, but it can wait."

The mage turns to her then, his gaze serious. "You are a kind — and frightfully observant — soul, my dear Mistress Duvalle. I will not go unless you tell me you are reasonably safe from whatever our illustrious spymaster is recruiting you for. I made a terrible mistake in Redcliffe. I do not intend to repeat it." His moustache twitches in a smile. "My sleep is a miserable thing as it is. I do not plan to compound the restlessness with more smears on my conscience."

Margo grins and squashes the sudden impulse to throw her arms around the preposterous dandy's neck and blurt out something embarrassingly sentimental. "I'm fine, Dorian. Go unwind. We can speak later." It has the advantage of getting her off the hook, for now at least. There is more than one frightfully observant character in this encounter.

Dorian hesitates for another second before joining the cardplayers, to Varric's approving chuckle. "Prickly? There's room for one more."

"I don't have any money to lose, Varric." Not strictly speaking true, since the gold she received from Josephine is still weighing down her purse, but they don't need to know that. "Unless whoever wins gets one of those delightfully gauche romance novels you secretly write."

In the light of the bonfire, Varric's squint looks positively disreputable. "I don't write romances, Prickly. Too much structure. I like to kill my darlings."

"You're dealing, Varric." Bull's rumble is the sort of lazy tone that makes Margo decide that he will probably be checking with his organization about Varric's writerly activity and genre preferences. She hides the smirk in her scarf. There is something delightful about the idea of a mid-level Qunari bureaucrat trudging through the muck of purple prose.

She briefly considers that she would perhaps be better off joining the others, but some vague impulse propels her down the path, past the revelers and bonfires, and towards the set of wooden stairs that leads to the observation platform at the right side of the gates. Margo looks up. A familiar plaid-clad leg dangles off the side of the wooden perch.

"Sera?" Margo calls out. "Is that you up there?"

"Not even," comes the slurred but jovial reply. "There's no room unless you want to sit in Beardie's lap. Or mine. I guess. But then there won't be room for the flag—... hic ... —on."

Margo frowns. "Sera, are you drunk ?"

"Am not!"

A bearded head appears over the railing. "Aye, that she is."

Margo ascends the stairs and almost runs into Lace Harding, who, by the looks of it, is the only reasonably sober one of the trio. Her bow is propped against the wall, and she is munching on a bread roll. The other two sit with their backs against the palisade, a large flagon of booze cradled between them.

"Are we celebrating, then?" Not Margo's most astute question.

"Waiting for the Herald to show up." Sera wobbles to her feet. Blackwall obligingly stabilizes her until the elf regains verticality. " I 'm celebrating, 'cuz fuck that... hic ... hole. Not that way. But it's over, yeah? Beardy here's drowning his sorrows. And Lace is... Dunno. Lace, whatcha doing?"

"Providing cover fire in case of an attack on her ladyship." Harding takes another bite from her bread roll.

"I am not drowning my sorrows, Sera. Can't a man have a drink in peace without there needing to be some tragic reason for it?"

"Depends." Sera cups her hands around her mouth in a pantomime of sharing the world's dirtiest secret. "Warden Blackwall's got competition ."

"It's no bloody competition when no one is competing! Lady Josephine is free to receive flowers from anyone she damn well pleases..."

"Beardy's not taking it well," Sera declares in a theatrical whisper.

Blackwall grunts in disgust and makes room for Margo to join them on the platform. "Mind playing nanny to this drunk elf? I have to... step away for a moment."

"He means he needs to piss," Sera confides in the same tone.

Margo gives Blackwall a sympathetic wince and takes up her new position next to a flushed, grinning, and very bouncy archer.

"Didn't even have that much? And then — whoosh — nothing left. How'd that happen? Your fault, actually. 'Cuz green minty stuff." Before Margo gets a chance to impart the importance of not drinking the prototypes, Sera pivots sharply and squints into the darkness.

"Well, shite. They're back."

Margo tries to follow the archer's gaze. A small file of torches snakes down the mountain path, winking in and out of view between the dark silhouettes of fir trees — black spears against the cobalt blue of the starlit glacier.

Sudden dread grips her — a muddled, restless anticipation that radiates from her solar plexus and binds her limbs at the edge of fight or flight.

"Alright there, Spindly? Got pale a bit. Don't worry, it's them. See that thing?" Sera waves rather expansively. "Like a beehive, but purple? Vivy's new hat."

"Nicely spotted!" Harding points a gloved finger towards the procession. "There's the commander up there. The Herald right behind. And that's Solas, judging by the posture."

"That glowy thing?"

Harding frowns. "I don't see a barrier spell."

"The head . Definitely glowy."

Margo nods distractedly. She strains her eyes to see the tiny shapes trailing down towards Haven.

Are agreements made in the Fade binding? She hasn't forgotten her deal with the aforementioned "glowy-headed" elf — the fact that it was made under the overly optimistic assumption that they would not survive until the Breach was closed shouldn't annul it. The Hellmouth is no more, and Solas promised answers. Conditions met, and all that. Of course, she'll likely have to take the mental equivalent of a seam ripper to the resident apostate's carefully tailored answers.

Margo stuffs her hands into her pockets. Well. No time like the present.

"Feel like we should be throwing shite at them." Sera muses. "Petals, maybe. Nah, too wilty. Grains? Eggs?" She sighs. "Should've gotten petards."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by black ooze._

Next up: A long overdue conversation between you know who.

As always, a million thanks for following and leaving me your thoughts.


	81. Chapter 81: Transfigurations

_In which the heroes return victorious, Evie gives a speech, Madame Vivienne demonstrates her skills, and Margo marches off to her scheduled appointment._

* * *

Waiting for Evie and her entourage to breach the gates takes an eternity — a temporal extension on a logarithmic curve that feels downright spiteful, much like when a watched kettle seems to delay the moment of boiling out of sheer maliciousness. The anticipation even gets to the otherwise admirably even-keeled Scout Harding, who taps her foot against the boards with rising impatience.

Margo blows on her fingers in a futile effort to keep them warm and tries to stomp some feeling back into her feet.

Then, finally, the vanguard of the procession bursts forth from behind the bend of the road, Cullen and Cassandra riding at a good clip on their almost identical chestnut mounts, the horses huffing great bursts of vapor into the frigid evening air. Behind the military duo, Evie follows, flanked by Ser Barris on one side and Vivienne on the other. The Orlesian mage's expression is a perfect mask of dignified triumph, her full lips curved just a little in the ghost of a smile. As Evie's pacer picks up speed, its nostrils flaring at the scent of home, Margo catches Barris's gaze on the Herald, the knight's face an odd mixture of worry and wonder. He drives his heels into the flanks of his own mount to keep apace — as if an invisible tether tugs him towards Evie's small, fur-wrapped form.

Evie spots the welcoming committee on the sentry platform and waves as her horse approaches the gates. Margo waves back. Next to her, Sera sticks two fingers between her teeth and follows up with such a deafening whistle that Margo's ears pop.

"All hail Our Lady Herald!" Sera hoots, pumping a fist into the air in an exuberant salute.

Behind Evie, Solas rides alone, his expression fixed in abstract contemplation. Margo's gaze snags, tracing the sharp line of his cheekbone and the hollow beneath, the bold angle of his jawline. Her attention lingers for too long, because he jerks his head upward, and his eyes land on her. His smile is so subtle it might as well not be there, but he maintains eye contact past the requirements of a friendly greeting. At the periphery of Margo's vision, Warden Blackwall salutes the riders below, military style. Solas offers a brisk nod in return, and returns his eyes to Haven's gates.

Margo decides not to wait for the contingent of templars marching behind Evie's vanguard. Instead, she follows Blackwall and a slightly wobbly Sera down the steps. Harding retains her position and waves them on with a, "Someone should keep an eye out."

Cullen departs quickly, but the others linger near the entrance. At the sight of their newly annointed hero, the village rustles into a shocked hush, then erupts into cheers — one or two at first, then a mounting chorus that spreads like wildfire between the revelers. Margo tries to jostle her way forward through the condensing crowd — though it becomes quite clear that the best approach is to follow in Blackwall's wake, as he parts the sea of bodies like an icebreaker. She manages to secure a front-row position, just in time to watch Cassandra pull the reins and lean down to whisper something in Evie's ear. Judging by the girl's wide-eyed horror, Margo decides that Seeker Pentaghast just suggested Evie give a speech.

Margo meets Evie's frantic gaze and gives her a thumbs-up, with a belated prayer in the general direction of the local unmerciful deity that the gesture doesn't translate into something obscene. She follows up this pantomime with a more neutral nod. It probably says something about the entire situation that Margo's one and only trip to Bulgaria, with its reversed nodding conventions where "yes" means "no," felt far more jarring than her transplantation to Thedas, at least as far as ingrained bodily habits of communication are concerned. She stifles the habitual hysterical giggle, wondering whether the reaction is secondhand nervousness over Evie's impending formal address to the populace or something to do with her scheduled conversation with a certain elf.

Just as Margo decides that the thought doesn't get her anywhere productive, Evie clears her throat.

A pause. And then the kid opens her remarks with the timeless, "Hummm."

The crowd hushes, tense, anticipatory. Faces turn upward — some lifted in adoration, a few shuttered behind a glaze of skepticism. And others outright fearful, with an undercurrent of hostility.

"P-people of H-Haven," Evie stutters. She clears her throat again, blushing desperately. "Oh Andraste's mercy, I'm terribly sorry, I am no good at this sort of thing at all."

A few snickers erupt, but the tension remains, taut as a string. On the other side of the narrow circle currently not occupied by the spectators, Vivienne turns her horse around with an unhurried elegance, her expression frozen in a mask of polite interest. Behind it, a flash of something suspiciously close to concern — though whether for Evie's well-being or the potential consequences of a social faux pas, Margo isn't sure.

"I... I've not given many speeches before. I asked Seeker Pentaghast how one goes about addressing people where there's lots of them — like now. And she gave very good advice, I think. Like I should look just above everyone's head, and not make eye contact. But then, Ambassador Montilyet suggested that if I get very nervous — like now — I should imagine that I am speaking to a group of nugs."

A few awkward giggles, and a couple of snorts. Margo feels her heart fluttering in her throat. Oh, kiddo, what are you doing? Evie's blush deepens, but the kid forges on with grim determination. "The Iron Bull thought I should picture everyone in their smalls, which I thought was not very sound advice, what with the weather and all. I think this is probably a Qunari thing. And Ser Barris said I should just say what is on my mind — but by this point, all I can think about is nugs in underwear. So you see my predicament."

This time, the laughter is a great deal warmer, and some of the tension leeches from the crowd.

"What I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry." Evie takes a deep breath. "I wish I could be the hero you all deserve. But I can't. And I wish I could say that it's all over — that the Breach is closed, and that it won't happen again. But I can't. And I wish I could tell you that everyone can just go home, and that there won't be any more blood spilled, and that everything will go back to how it was." She takes another shuddering breath, and the words that come next no longer quaver. That piercing, tinkling lilt Margo remembers from the horrid witch trial creeps into Evie's voice again, an undercurrent of steel and silver. "And that, too, I can't. Because there is always a next time, isn't there?"

Evie's words fall into dead silence, the wind her only interlocutor. She draws herself up, and for a moment, in the unsteady glow of the bonfires, she flickers like a mirage, a creature of flame and shadow, ancient as the stones of the temple she left behind.

"But what I can say is that the next time you face horror we will be at your side. And when blades are raised against you and yours, they shall meet our steel. And when the world is ablaze, we shall counter its fire with ours. And even when we falter against the odds — and falter we shall, for all things in this world are finite... " She pauses — perhaps to take a breath, but the timing could not be more fortuitous. The crowd stills, spellbound, hanging on the edge of the young woman's ellipsis. "And should we fall... we shall rise again," Evie finishes.

The seconds of stunned silence gather, crest, and then, finally, break into a deafening roar. "Praise the Herald of Andraste!"

How are prophets made? How do they become what they are, crystallizing from the unpredictable mess of the day-to-day into the catalysts of history? Margo balls her fists against a sudden jolt of vertigo. Hats soar in the air, helmets and other random objects are brandished in a paroxysm of enthusiasm, knees hit the snow in genuflecting religious ardor. There are whistles and shouts, and the mass of bodies presses closer. Margo manages to retain her place at the front by the grace of Blackwall's strategically deployed shoving. Around her, people extend their hands towards Evie — only to be driven back by the ever vigilant Seeker Pentaghast and Ser Barris, who maneuver their horses with practiced ease to exert crowd control. Once the populace settles a bit, Blackwall harrumphs. He leans to Margo, and she catches a whiff of frost and liquor, but when he speaks, there is no trace of inebriation in his voice — only quiet reverence. "Our Lady Trevelyan will be leading armies before we know it, mark my words."

Bodies press around her, inching forward, and Margo finds herself progressively jostled towards the back of the crowd. Before she can put her elbows to work to regain her position, a commotion erupts. Over the heads, shoulders, and necks that obscure her line of sight, Margo spots Evie suddenly swaying in the saddle and clutching her hand to her chest with a muffled cry. Ser Barris catches the bridle of Evie's pacer and soothes the spooked horse — and its pale rider — with a string of soft nonsense.

"Solas!" The command in Cassandra's voice is unmistakable.

"At your service, Seeker." Margo can't quite see the elf — he must have dismounted. She tries to crane her neck to get a better look, but then an exceptionally rectangular fellow with inordinately large ears — round and wide like satellite dishes sticking from underneath a bucket-shaped helmet — materializes in front of her.

Trying to step around Mr. Very Large Array proves impossible — other gawkers fill in all available spaces like gas.

Cassandra's voice carries over the ruckus. "The Herald requires rest. Please, everyone. Enjoy the festivities. You have earned it."

"Is the Herald sick, then?" A woman's thick Starkhaven's brogue cuts through the ambient din.

"The He—..."

Cassandra doesn't get the chance to finish.

"I am fine!" Evie's voice is tired, but oddly forceful. "Please, don't fret on my behalf. It's been a long day, though, and I think I could use a cup of wine and some sleep."

This is met with loud cheers — especially, Margo suspects, at the reminder of free booze. Naturally, instead of dispersing in search of the aforementioned liquid, the crowd mills around — now as eager for the prospect of gossip as it is for other forms of entertainment. Bread and circuses, and what have you.

Since the way forward is clearly impassable, Margo decides that the best offense is a strategic retreat. The part of her mind in charge of self-preservation offers the perfectly reasonable argument that this is a prime opportunity to absquatulate, that she is likely neither needed nor welcome in the theater that will surround Evie's subsequent prophetization — the kid will have more than enough caretakers, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that, as far as the social hierarchy of the Inquisition is concerned, an apprentice alchemist and the Herald of Andraste are now on diametrically opposite ends of the food chain. Though, who is she kidding — this has always been the case.

The voice of reason might as well be talking to a wall — Margo's feet propel her towards Evie's hut. She dodges gawkers, a food stand, and two very drunken oafs of the Tweedle persuasion — mercifully too drunk to pay her any mind beyond the obligatory watery leer. She pulls her hood over her head and weaves her way up the path under the assumption that the powers that be will want to tend to Evie out of view of prying eyes. Hierarchies be damned, she's not leaving the kid at the hands of Xena the Warrior Princess, whose bedside manner probably evinces as many social niceties as a cinder block. And then, there is the other issue — the question of Solas's capacity to exert control on the magic in Evie's mark. Now, why would that be? Besides, structurally speaking, for all of Solas's claims of his own marginality — humble apostate and all that — the one who keeps the golden goose from turning into foie gras gets to bring a grenade launcher to a knife fight. She wonders whether he's ever thought of using that leverage with Torquemada.

Now, what she needs is a plausible reason for being there. Beyond, that is, the dubious excuse of providing emotional support — like that argument would go well with the rest of Team Inquisition.

"And where, might I ask, are you headed, Mistress Duvalle?"

Margo freezes — just before running headlong into Vivienne's horse, which shies away with a startled snort.

"The same way as you are, I suspect."

Vivienne surveys her from above with an expression of abstract scientific curiosity — the kind that involves chloroform and a scalpel.

"Whatever else you might be, you are neither a medic nor a mage — what insights, exactly, do you hope to offer regarding the Herald's situation?" The Iron Lady stretches her lips into a perfectly amiable smile.

Margo shrugs, smothering the impulse to spook the horse on purpose. "Maybe none." This is not the time to devolve into petty bickering. It won't serve her — in fact, she is reasonably certain that it is exactly what Vivienne is hoping to provoke. "But sometimes just a friendly presences goes a long way."

"There is a fine line between comfort and coddling — one that, in the case of the Herald, might have far-reaching repercussions."

Margo stuffs her hands in her pockets, along with her mounting resentment. "I don't think she's had too much experience with either, to be honest. So while I appreciate your caution..."

Vivienne doesn't let her finish. She waves the rest of the utterance away with an impatient flick of her hand. "This is neither the place nor the time to debate Lady Trevelyan's upbringing, if that is what your protest is aimed at, 'Mistress Duvalle' — or whatever you are." The Orlesian courtier pauses and drums her fingers on the pommel of her saddle, as if lost in thought for a moment. "But neither is this the time for verbal jousting — such things are best kept to the salon. In fact, I have a much more concrete suggestion, insofar as you insist on making yourself useful."

"Oh?" It's not even particularly acerbic.

"Come along, now. We might require someone to go fetch a few things from Master Adan."

###

They catch up to the others just as they are about to enter Evie's hut. If Margo's presence in Vivienne's company elicits surprise, none of it shows. Evie takes one look at her, and her face smoothes out into a smile — though the dark circles under the girl's eyes and the way her jaw is locked against whatever pain ails her are not lost on Margo.

After the frigid night air, the inside of the hut is sweltering hot, the hearth fire licking at a giant log of something that looks like birchwood, but with a brownish tint to the bark.

"I'm really fine! You don't need to..."

"With all due respect, Evelyn, worrying about your well-being is part of my duties. Part of all of our duties." Cassandra removes her winter cloak and hangs it on a wall hook. Ser Barris plants himself by the door and leans against the wall in a pose that Margo decides is "templar-casual" — relaxed but vigilant.

"May I examine your hand, Herald?" Solas positions himself on a chair next to where Evie is seated on the bed. Vivienne, on the other side, occupies the only other available chair. The kid shrugs out of her cloak, letting it fall behind her, and extends her left hand. Margo perches next to Cassandra on a wooden bench by the wall. Evie's palm and fingers look swollen, and the skin around the mark is patchy, with an unhealthy, angry red tint.

The sudden scent of iodine alerts Margo to the healing spell, even before Solas has finished casting. While he works, Margo leans towards Cassandra. "Shouldn't we fetch Lud? Or Master Adan?"

Cassandra's expression remains unaltered. "The Herald is already the center of a vortex of gossip and speculation. It is inevitable, I suppose, but it would be best if we contained it as much as possible. Inviting a healer would simply confirm some of the rumors. Besides, Madame Vivienne is an accomplished alchemist in her own right, if we decide we need aid." She pauses. When she speaks again, she sounds almost apologetic. "However, you offer the benefit of ambiguity by virtue of your... less defined position. If you could provide alchemical support, should it be needed — and mix the necessary ingredients without drawing attention — it would be appreciated."

Margo nods. Of course. With the added advantage that being an elf slots her easily into the "handmaiden" role, at least as far as the general population is concerned. Just another knife-ear attending to the Herald. Nothing to see here, move along.

"The magic of the mark is stable, Herald." Beneath the gentle tone, Solas's voice harbors a note of something else. Unease, perhaps, or sadness — or both. Whatever emotion it is, it remains buried — albeit, in Margo's opinion, in a rather shallow grave. For a brief second, she finds herself almost resentful of the others — judging by their tentatively hopeful expressions, this ability to read the elf's affective undercurrents is not a skill anyone else felt the need to develop.

"Solas darling, this magic — whatever its nature — is foreign to Lady Trevelyan, as I am certain you realize. But you appear to know a great deal about how it might be modulated. Wherever did you glean such exceptional knowledge?" Vivienne's tone is entirely too casual.

"I am an apostate, as well you know. My travels have afforded me insights outside of the conventional wisdom of your Circles."

The two mages regard each other with matching flawlessly polite expressions — and as much cordiality as a cobra facing off with a mongoose. Solas is the first to return his eyes to the matter at hand — which is currently pulsing a soft, ethereal green. "But you are correct. I have no more insight into how such magic might impact its unintended host than you do."

"I really am fine. I think I just need to ice it," Evie mutters apologetically, her cheeks suddenly reddening.

"What if it's anaphylaxis?" Margo blurts out, in amorphous distress over Evie's embarrassment. At least, the loonie statement has the benefit of redirecting the attention from the kid and to her — not an improvement, all things considered, but Evie, at least gives her a grateful (if mildly confused) look.

"Speak plainly, apprentice." There is a note of warning in Cassandra's tone.

She tries to think frantically of a better translation — or, minimally, a culturally appropriate analogy. Does Thedas have the concept of allergies? "What happens when you get exposed to rashvine nettle?" Not the most elegant parallel, but she decides it will do in a pinch.

There is a long, terribly uncomfortable pause. Succor arrives from an unlikely quarter — Ser Barris, still by the door, clears his throat. "It itches and burns like nobody's business. Ahem. Agent. And it'll get worse the more it happens." He shifts from one foot to the other — looking surprised and discomfited by this sudden interjection. "When we were just starting out in the Order, the other kids..." He clears his throat again and shoots a troubled look at Evie. "Never mind, I suppose. It's not pleasant."

Margo beams at him. "Right. Your body mounts a defense against something it perceives as a... foreign substance." Here's to hoping that rashvine nettle operates a bit like poison ivy. Why not? Plenty of medicinal plants are toxic. "Red rash, swelling, itchiness. Evie, love, does your hand itch?"

"Andraste's tears, it does," Evie sighs. "I try not to scratch," she hurries to add, her eyes going wide, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. A very allergenic cookie jar.

"Why did you not mention this?" Solas asks, peeved, but, Margo decides, quite a bit relieved, too.

"It didn't seem all that important, what with all the other stuff, and the rifts, and the Breach, and all the people expecting me to say things that make sense... I mean..." Evie deflates. "And besides, I always thought you were more worried about when it flares and pulses, not so much about the hand itself."

"You should have mentioned it, darling," Vivienne cuts in, her tone shockingly gentle. "But if Mistress Duvalle's guess is correct, then the problem can be addressed with relative ease." She turns to Margo, who decides to not take to heart the brief flash of something that almost borders on grudging approval. Probably just a trick of the light. "It would appear that you can make yourself useful after all, apprentice."

###

Making herself useful turns out to involve a trip to the apothecary, which stands deserted and dark — fiddling with the brazier, miserably failing at activating the fire rune, fumbling for Master Adan's box of fire crystals, igniting a candle, and then rummaging through the bookshelves in search of something called Franny's Poultice Recipes , which she has a vague recollection of seeing but hasn't had the chance to appropriate yet. And then skimming the section titled "Rashes and Other Unpleasant Skin Conditions, Except for the Ones That Happen Because You Should Have Kept Your Pants On, Which Is Sound Advice More Generally . "

Margo immediately decides that she likes this Franny, whoever they were.

After that, she pilfers enough premixed balms to start her own mail-order cosmetic business and marches back to Evie's hut, dodging more drunken revelers who, at this stage of inebriation, have passed the phase of life-affirmingly joyful and have bifurcated into the two complementary camps of inexplicably mopy and amorously gropy.

Her arrival is greeted with vague alarm at her haul of remedies — except from Vivienne, who surprises her for the second time this evening by gesturing expansively towards the table with a, "Good, this should certainly do." After that, the Orlesian mage proceeds to quickly sniff — with utmost elegance — through the assortment of jars, locating one that passes critical inspection. "Ah, good. Embrium-based, from what I can tell — a bit pedestrian without the spider venom, but not a bad place to start."

From there, Vivienne takes over the proceedings, slathering Evie's hand with a thick layer of brown, viscous paste — the consistency like red clay pretending to be honey. "Twice a day, morning and night, and let us revisit this in a day or two. Do you have anything to cover this with?" Evie produces a pair of industrial-sized rough gloves, based on their appearance more appropriate for gardening. The courtier wrinkles her nose in distaste. "I will send you some gloves to wear over this. These... what are these exactly? Mittens? Either way, they will certainly not do. Wherever did you procure these horrors?"

"Aunt Lucille..." Evie begins, but Vivienne pats her shoulder with a sympathetic wince.

"I understand. If the Inquisition is unable to offer an alternative, I am certain I shall."

Evie eyes the glove dubiously. "I'll put it on before I go to bed."

There is an awkward moment of milling about, where the assembled company decides how to best depart. Ser Barris mutters something about "orders" and "Commander Cullen" and is promptly excused by Cassandra, who follows up with her own curt — if more socially graceful — goodbyes, and a summons for Evie to meet the advisors in the morning. Vivienne departs without feeling the need to offer any explanation whatsoever — but not before planting a light kiss on Evie's forehead. "Make sure you get sufficient sleep, my dear. Let the rest of them enjoy their fete — trust me when I say you will not miss a thing." At the threshold, she turns to Solas. "I believe your work here is done. You said yourself — the mark is stable."

"Indeed," Solas retorts dryly and stands up to leave. "Rest, Herald."

Evie nods. Margo stands up to leave as well, but the kid catches her hand. "Stay for a moment? I promise I'll let you go to sleep, or celebrate, or what have you soon?"

"Sure thing, kiddo." Margo takes a seat on the bed but catches Solas's gaze on her. "Solas, I will speak with you shortly?"

Apparently she is not the only one who has developed the ability to read the other's hidden expressions, because Solas's eyes linger on her — a question, then the answer that resolves it fleeting across his features. He nods. "As agreed, as I recall. You know where to find me." The corner of his lips twitches — and with that he exits, the thud of the door closing behind him full of gravitas.

Evie leans her head on Margo's shoulder and exhales, her body relaxing. Margo hugs the kid to herself and rests her cheek against the young woman's hair. At least the ointment smells passably nice, of rose water and hay.

"You did awesome, hon."

Evie sighs but huddles closer. "Did I?" She looks up. "Do you think people could go home now?"

Margo reflects on the question, suddenly uneasy. "Some might. But you said it yourself. It's not exactly over. Whoever was behind the explosion is still out there."

"It's not like many people would leave, anyway — I mean, some actually live in Haven, right? And Lady Nightingale and Seeker Pentaghast, they're not going back home, I don't think, even if the Breach is closed. I guess Ambassador Montilyet could return to Antiva — and Madame Vivienne could go back to Orlais, and..." Evie trails off.

"Evie, hon, I don't think anyone is leaving. What's this about, love?" Margo's stomach makes a valiant attempt at trading places with the organs below. Of course, she knows exactly what this is about — but she lets the silence grow, allowing Evie to voice the thought when she's ready.

"But, eventually, when everything is solved, they could go home, couldn't they?"

Margo nods slowly. "Those who have a home to return to, yes."

Evie lifts up her head. "So what about the rest?"

The line between support and coddling glows into view, fine as spider silk. "I don't know, sweetheart." Margo kicks Imshael's indecent proposals under the rug where they belong. "I don't think I, for one, have that option."

Evie stares at the hand cradled in her lap. Margo is pleased to note that the skin of her palm at the edges of the layer of ointment is starting to look less angry. "So what does one do when one does not have that option?"

"I suppose one makes a home wherever one is." She points her chin at Evie's explosion of embroidered cushions. "You're well on your way towards that goal — this place is starting to look cozy."

Evie beams at her. "I like them. I don't know where Sera gets them, but they make me happy. I just wish..." She doesn't finish, interrupted by a jaw-splitting yawn. "Oh, I'm so sorry. That was very rude. Though I suppose it's less rude if I'm yawning at my own words rather than at someone else's, isn't it?"

"You should get some sleep."

Evie curls up on the bed and lets her head rest on one of the aforementioned pillows. "Don't drink too much," she advises through another yawn.

Margo grins. "Words of wisdom right there."

"Stay away from the sweet ones with fancy names." Evie's cheeks dimple with a melancholy smile.

Margo chuckles. "Not to my taste. You're still talking about drinks, right?"

"Come to think of it, I think you should offer one to Solas. Does he ever get drunk, do you think?"

Margo almost chokes but somehow manages a passable repair. "I... haven't seen it."

"I bet you Seeker Pentaghast drinks like a fish, though."

This time Margo chokes in earnest.

Evie pulls the blanket over herself and rubs her eyes. "When no one is looking. Good night, Margo."

"Good night, kiddo."

Margo takes the long way back, detouring through where the requisition tents stand deserted — the snow in front of the chantry is mushed into frozen mud, but the space is mercifully free of inebriated citizenry. Songs and laughter drift on the evening air. She walks down the alley between the houses towards the dark courtyard by the apothecary. The window on Solas's hut is the only one still illuminated, light seeping through the crack between the shutters.

It takes a conscious effort not to knock before entering. With a firm reminder that, technically, this is her house too, Margo pulls the door open, and steps inside.

* * *

 _Next up:_ _In which Solas and Margo establish the rules of engagement._

 **A/N: Thank you all for your reading eyes and reviews, especially those of you who review as guests (I'm sorry I have no easy way to reply to your comments in that case without spamming the chapter text, since FF's functionality isn't great in that department. You can also find me on AO3 and Tumblr if you would like more author interaction, but please know that every note is enormously appreciated)**


	82. Chapter 82: Nothing Besides Remains

_Content warning: NSFW_

* * *

Margo finds Solas seated at the table, in the company of a large book and a bottle — an expensive one, if the fussily ornamental wax around the top is anything to go by. It hasn't been uncorked, but two glasses — proper wine glasses, at that — sit next to it, arranged with fastidious symmetry.

Solas lifts his head from his reading — his expression inscrutable save for the slight tremor in his fingers. He sets the book down with a great deal more caution than the operation warrants and clasps his hands in his lap.

Margo takes off her coat and boots and pads to the other chair. He looks like he is about to say something — a greeting perhaps — but no words come out, only a soft, almost reluctant exhale. He gestures, a little brusquely and entirely belatedly, at the seat in front of her.

"Are we celebrating?" Margo asks, and if her voice trembles a little, it is surely the effect of the abrupt temperature changes, and not, say, nervousness.

"We..." Solas's eyes search the room in momentary confusion and land on the bottle. He stares at it in mild puzzlement, as if only now remembering its presence — or its intended purpose. "Ah. Yes. I thought that, given the circumstances, we might make use of this."

"Liquid courage?" Margo teases, and sits down. "Wherever did you get it?"

"I won it in a card game," Solas retorts absentmindedly, stands up, and begins pacing. His bare toes make almost no sound against the floorboards. "Master Tethras has a habit of strategically losing, I believe to gain information."

"What did he win in exchange for the bottle?" Margo asks, squinting at the label. A small stamp identifies the beverage as Rivaini.

"Nothing he did not know — or suspect — already."

Margo cocks an eyebrow. Whatever beans Solas decided to spill to procure this prize from the local auteur, rogue, and upstanding businessman, she has no doubt that they were very carefully measured out, weighed, and dispensed conservatively.

"Should we open it, then?" she asks. Liquid courage sounds like an excellent idea right about now.

Solas clasps his hands behind his back, and resumes his pacing. "In a moment, if you permit. First..." He trails off and comes to a halt in the middle of the room — looking at once full of resolve and a little lost. "We will establish rules."

Margo blinks. "Rules? Rules for what, exactly."

The elf draws a breath, and when he speaks, he appears to have regained a modicum of composure. "I promised to answer your questions, fenor, and it occurs to me that I have a few of my own. We should agree on the rules of engagement for this procedure, if there is to be an equitable exchange."

After a brief battle against the need to fidget — fought, and promptly lost — Margo pretends to examine the tome left on the table. She reads the title three times before it even registers. The History of the Chantry, Volume 2. Fascinating, no doubt. "Why do you suppose my answers would not be freely given?"

Solas's lips quirk into a humorless smile. "Because you are remarkably proficient at giving answers while leaving much outside the frame."

She chuckles. "Well then. A match made in Haven, as it were." She shakes her head at his light frown.

"Another untranslatable play on words, I presume?"

"I'm happy to translate, actually. Heaven — as in 'the heavens' — tends to have a great deal of religious significance for many of my world's cultures."

Solas glides back to his seat, but his posture remains rigid. "Then it is another interesting parallel that I look forward to discussing, though perhaps not tonight."

Margo clinks a nail against the bottle. "Solas..." The words get stuck mid-way. Right. Intellectual honesty or bust. "We're both nervous, it seems. Open it, will you?"

He exhales around a rueful chuckle. "I... Yes." He peels off the seal and pulls out the cork — a procedure that requires neither corkscrew nor magic. The air fills with the scent of coconut and molasses. Rum? Solas pours the thick, topaz-brown liquid and pushes one of the glasses towards Margo. She takes an exploratory sniff. No avoiding sweet drinks after all. Sorry, Evie.

"Care to offer a toast? Mine tend to always default to the same topic." She grins. "Living beings, suffering, benefiting, that sort of thing."

"I have not forgotten your predilection for ritual invocations."

Margo shrugs. "Where I come from, drinking without a toast would be considered rather gauche."

Solas accepts this explanation by raising his glass. "Then may I suggest we drink to the possibility of a better future."

"Better than which one?" Margo squints, suddenly terribly suspicious.

A smile touches his lips, and his eyes crinkle with amusement, but beneath it, something else simmers, murky and troubled. "Better than the one you saw in Redcliffe, for one. With the Breach closed, there is a chance that it shall not come to pass."

Margo clinks her glass to his and takes a sip. Rum indeed, but with a bitter, almost medicinal finish. Yo ho ho, and all that.

"I don't think we are out of hot water yet," she offers cautiously. In the back of her mind, the monstrous tree looms into view, unfathomable — and on one of its infinite branches, another Solas smiles a final goodbye, lyrium-riddled and doomed. Margo blinks the vision from her eyes. The world is all that is the case.

"Sealing the Breach is no minor victory, fenor."

"Which brings us to the matter at hand. We survived, surprisingly enough."

Solas redirects his eyes to the drink between his palms. Silence settles, bringing with it an awareness of the world outside. The celebration seems to have gained a second wind, if the muffled music and discordant singing is any indication.

"So," Margo takes another sip of Rivaini Finest and sets her glass on the table. "Rules of engagement."

"Indeed." Solas looks up. The odd edge is back, once again putting her in mind of something caged and possibly feral lurking beneath the polite exterior. "I... will make an offer. You may amend, correct, or counter with your own suggestions. We will continue until we reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. The terms will be binding, at least for this particular aspect of our interactions."

Margo chuckles despite herself. "Spoken like a lawyer." Or a swindler, she doesn't add, though she supposes the two are not mutually exclusive.

He eyes her with an odd, complicated expression, and Margo notices that, once again, a subtle tremor has returned to his fingers. "I shall not offer you lies, fenor."

Margo frowns. Something about the utterance strikes her as slightly off-kilter, but she can't quite put her finger on it. "So how are we playing this?"

"A question for a question. We will let chance determine who initiates. Until each of us receives an answer that satisfies, we will not advance to the next round."

Margo props her chin on her fist, and whirls her glass, reflecting. "Simple, but flawed. How does one determine whether the answers traded are equivalent? You said it yourself, in so many words — a partial truth is also a partial lie."

It is Solas's turn to frown. "I do not see it that way. The lie is in the eye of the beholder — a product of the interlocutor's failure to ask for clarification."

Margo narrows her eyes. Not so fast, buster. It is not the liar's fault that the fool is trusting. Thanks, Baba. "To ask for clarification, one has to know what to ask for . And for that, you need to know — or guess — what's left unsaid. Which brings us back to the earlier point. We need a system of penalties."

He cocks an eyebrow, and takes a sip of rum. The tremor in his fingers is gone. "Penalties? One presumes these would require an impartial arbiter."

"Or a great deal of good faith." Margo tries to keep the slyness out of her expression. "But I suppose we are both passably intelligent — enough to notice the other party's glaring omissions — and point them out, should the need arise."

They regard each other over their respective libations — an exchange laden with an odd sort of intimacy — the type shared by familiar opponents, taking each other's measure over an invisible chessboard. Margo allows her eyes to drift out of focus, turning the parameters of the game around in her head. How might this play out, hypothetically speaking? Consider Scenario A. She has no doubt whatsoever that asking the elf point-blank what he's hiding will lend no satisfactory result — he will answer truthfully, but with so much relevant information trimmed from the edges that there will be no way to intuit the bigger picture. Not to mention how it will muddle his trail. She takes a sip of rum, letting the sweet burn settle in her stomach and spread its softening tendrils through her limbs.

Consider, on the other hand, Scenario B. What if he asks her about things she would rather not divulge — at least, not yet, not until she understands them better herself? Things that would take too long to explain, and for which her vocabulary is insufficient — blanks filled in by half-baked intuitions and scraps of disjointed information, by scribbles of childhood memories, barely legible. Matters of trees, and branches, of roots buried deep, of old women who by the day grow more other , ancient fibrous beings with skin like leaves rustling on a November wind. Things that dwell in mythical chicken-legged huts.

Or questions about deals and demons, and about just how deep she is down the rabbit hole, the toxic tango with the Cosmic Shitgibbon, step and counterstep, at the edge of the slippery slope.

Or the other matter, the secret that's not hers to give away if she wants to keep her skin attached to the rest of her — because she's not at all sure that Torquemada's above a good old-fashioned flaying if it comes to that.

Solas does not press her for a response. He remains so silent and still Margo almost forgets that he's there at all. She catches him in the act of surveying her expressions with utmost attention. He averts his gaze — his ears turning traitorously pink.

"The first question can only be a yes or no one. You get only one follow up, and that one can be open-ended. If either person refuses to answer the follow-up, the other party gets to request a boon."

"What sort of boon?" Solas asks, caution creeping into his voice.

Margo lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "Not the answer, obviously. From there, it depends, I suppose. An object. A favor. An action of some kind. Something that in the other player's opinion offers adequate compensation for the failure to respond."

Solas nods slowly, his eyes twinkling. He looks suspiciously pleased with this turn of events, and Margo concludes that he has just classified this new arrangement as benefiting him in some way. She drums her fingers on the table and rests the other hand on her knee. Her palms feel cold and unpleasantly clammy despite the ambient warmth.

"These 'boons,' as you call them, cannot be abstract or deferred to a later date," Solas adds after a pause. "They will be specified during the round, and paid in full within a reasonable — or agreed upon — timeframe."

Margo nods. "No running up a tab."

A small smile ghosts across his lips. "Anything else, fenor?"

"Once the round comes to a close, the next round can only begin if both parties agree to it." Margo leans forward, and does her very best impersonation of the hairy eyeball. "Just so we're clear. This only applies to 'sensitive' questions. Such as things we've asked each other on multiple occasions, and consistently gotten an evasion..." she bends a finger, "... a deflection...", she bends another, "... or a non-answer to."

Solas smirks, all cheek. "A reasonable amendment. I can certainly see some... misapplications of this procedure, where the questions and answers lose relevance — depending, that is, on what a 'boon' might entail."

Margo converts the hairy eyeball to its evil eye cousin. "I see where your mind went. Shall we start then? I propose 'weather' — timeless topic, that. Always a classic"

If wounded innocence ever got in trouble with the law and had to have its mugshot taken, it would look an awful lot like the elf does at that moment. "I thought no such thing." He grows serious. "And perhaps the weather can wait. I do, in fact, have legitimate questions I would like answered. I am certain you do as well."

"Very well." She leans back. "Who starts? Do you have a coin?"

A chuckle, and then Solas produces a silver, seemingly out of thin air, with a little theatrical flourish. And promptly pockets it. "May I suggest that we use one of yours?"

It makes her laugh despite herself — the clever layering of sleight of hand against an anxiety Margo had not even formulated clearly until his performance brought it into the open. "Don't trust yourself not to cheat?"

"I would not cheat, fenor. But if we can avoid the very idea of such temptations, all the better." He brings his glass to his lips, takes a sip, and then his smile blooms, open and strangely unguarded. "I promised you to strive to even the terrain, as I recall."

"I am getting the distinct feeling you do not take promises lightly." She fishes for a coin in her pocket — and comes up with a few rather cruddy bits. "Will one of these do?" She lets them spill on the table and gestures for Solas to pick one. He picks the least grubby one, and hands it back to her.

She settles the coin on her thumbnail. "You call."

"Heads."

Margo launches the coin into the air — it spins wildly before she catches it on its way back. She slams it against the table with a bit more drama than strictly necessary. Solas leans in. She retracts her hand slowly. Beneath her palm, undecipherable heraldry, but no profile.

"It would appear that the first question is yours." Solas's tone is so devoid of any tonality it is downright eerie. He takes a rather more substantial gulp of rum, winces slightly, and sets the glass on the table before clasping his hands in his lap.

Shit. She's the one who argued for the "yes" or "no" format. Staircase wit all the way down — bumping its head on every step along the way. She should have negotiated for a trial run. Fine. Go with the best educated guess. She forces herself to take a breath, exhaling it slowly. Stupid clammy hands.

"Did you start off as a spirit?"

A shadow fleets across his face, and some unfathomably melancholy thing stirs behind his eyes — broken, adrift, and terribly old. "In a manner of speaking," he says finally.

Margo gapes in bottomless outrage. "How is that even an answer? "

His shoulders slump a fraction, but then he draws himself up. "It is the best one I can offer to this particular question. The other alternatives would be more duplicitous." He lifts his glass, and to Margo's utter consternation, simply knocks back the rest of his drink. He sets the empty goblet down softly, and leans back in his chair. In the dancing light of the candles, she can see his heartbeat pulsing at the hollow of his throat, fast and fluttery like a caged bird. "My turn, I believe. Then on to the clarifications."

Margo succumbs to temptation, and wipes her hands off on her pants. Ice prickles between her shoulder blades and trails down to the base of her spine. She nods.

"You struck a deal with the Forbidden One during your incarceration at the hands of the mad magister. He must have taken something from you. Was it a memory?"

Margo freezes. Shit shit shit. "That's cheating." Her voice comes out rough — like the wheeze of an elderly asthmatic crow. She clears her throat. "You've managed to wrap two additional questions into it."

Solas frowns, and slices his head to the side. "No, lethallan. I merely brought to light the inferences that led me to the question. Were I to limit it to the last portion, it would alter nothing."

Aaaand, shit. Of course, he's not wrong. Semantically, it works out to the same thing. Margo picks up her glass, apologizes to her borrowed liver, and shoots back the rum. It burns all the way down. She waits it out for a few long moments, until the fire in her esophagus settles a little. Eventually, she meets the elf's gaze. "Yes." There. Done and done. She congratulates herself on her newly found firmness. Liquid courage to the rescue.

"Why would you do such a thing?" For a split second, his face contorts with something close to pain — and not a little anger — but he collects himself quickly, then shakes his head, as if to dispel whatever emotion gripped him. "Oh, vhenan, was there no other way?"

Margo sighs. "That's two questions, Solas. Within the parameters of this exchange, anyway. Pick one."

He looks at her then, and Margo represses a flinch, blinking away the familiar illusion — that ethereal sense of him, the countenance of a forgotten demiurge, carved into some arcane mineral by an artist long reduced to shards of shattered bone. A scrap of a poem flickers across her mind — a fleeting and disintegrating meteor, lost to identification. " My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look at my works, ye Mighty, and despair..."

Margo returns to herself with a start. "You still have one question left," she says quietly.

Solas turns away, his eyes looking for something to rest on, and finding no satisfying purchase. "What did the memory entail?"

Of course. The why was rhetorical. He had already answered that question for himself. Margo doesn't know whether the realization is a relief or not.

It suddenly occurs to her that she could lie. It would be simple — to tell the formal truth — here, ladies and gentlemen, this here iceberg is very small, very small, nothing to see, just this tiny little frozen thing floating about. Nothing beneath the murky waters. Steady as she goes. It would not even be a lie — not technically . Who cares about the particularities of Maile's sexual escapades, right? Irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things. And if Imshael wanted that — well, that's his problem, she certainly is not equipped to make inferences about the twisted bowels of whatever passes for the Cosmic Asshole's mind. Maybe it was just a power play. To show her that he could.

She almost convinces herself.

"Ask me for a boon," Margo says instead.

Solas's eyes widen. "Ah." Soft, on an exhale. He regroups, but not before peering at her, again with that searching look that tries to pry beneath the surface. And then he shakes his head. "You could have given me a... simpler answer."

"I could have."

They watch each other.

"Before any requests are made, would you care to pose your second question?"

Margo hesitates. She reaches for the bottle, and pours them both another swig of rum — mostly to buy herself some time. What big eyes you have, dear granny. They did not specify whether the "boon" had to be clarified before the end of the first round of questions, or by the end of the entire exchange. He's waiting her out, the clever bastard.

She cradles the glass, letting her hands warm the liquid inside. "Very well." They're not exactly pulling their punches, all things considered. She could ask him about the wolf thing, but she has a strong suspicion it would end with an argument about changing topics. Might as well go to the core of it. Consider Scenario C, and Torquemada's little revelations. There are other worlds than these, Margo . Minimally, one possibility she might be able to cross off her list. If not A, then B.

"I suspect your difficulty in answering the previous question is taxonomic — which tells me that whatever contemporary Theodosians mean by 'spirits' doesn't quite match your world's categories. What world do you come from, Solas?"

He keeps his face studiously neutral, but it doesn't quite cut it. She sees it then, the moment of speculation — undoubtedly not so dissimilar from the one that played out on her own features only a few minutes ago.

Her blood turns to ice. It would be so very easy to offer a non-answer. "This one, of course." Or "One not so dissimilar." And if her hypothesis about his spirit origins is correct, perhaps "One long gone." Any variation of safe little untruths. Of course, the answer itself is tangential by design. A litmus test.

He meets her eyes. "Request a boon of me, fenor."

Margo releases a breath she did not know she was holding and shivers involuntarily. She forces her shoulders to relax and takes a hearty swig of rum. "You could have given me a simpler answer."

If Solas finds irony in the symmetry, it doesn't show. "I could not," he retorts gravely.

They sit in silence for a moment.

"I would like whatever books you might have on wolves."

This is clearly not what the elf was expecting, because Margo's incongruous demand is met with an uneasy chuckle. "Anything in particular about wolves that interests you?"

"Let's start with mythology. Myths and legends that mention wolves. My world has many — I wager ' yours' does as well."

His smile is a tad uneven. "My library is yours to use."

Margo leans back, and crosses her arms over her chest. "And quite an impressive one, for a humble apostate in such a modest village. It would take me a long time to navigate through your book collection." She shakes her head. "No. I think I should like a reading list."

"As you wish." He stands up and walks over to the bookshelf. Margo watches him gather a number of volumes, commiting where most are located to memory. His hand hovers over a particular tome, but he dismisses it for whatever reason, and selects the ones next to it. Margo makes a mental note. The green one, with the tree design on the spine. After a few minutes, he returns with five rather hefty doorstoppers. Judging by the titles, none of them are solely dedicated to anything discernibly lupine. Right. Select the omnibuses. If he's hoping to score a victory by boredom, he's got another thing coming.

"Begin with these. They are rather... exhaustive."

"I look forward to reading them," Margo says sweetly.

His quiet chortle summons the blasted warm and fuzzies. "My turn, I believe?" He doesn't retake his seat.

"Shoot."

He hesitates. "Dream with me."

Margo blinks. "Pardon?"

Solas begins to pace. "You are capable of entering the Deep Fade, or something very close to it — you summoned me there once. From there, I suspect you built your sanctuary." He meanders back to where she is seating, and crouches in front of her. After a brief pause, he lets his hands rest at the edges of her chair, his wrists brushing against her thighs. "Your Avvar mentor calls it weaving, as I recall. I... would understand how you do it."

Margo narrows her eyes, but her heartbeat picks up. This close, he is all angles and smooth, lean grace.

"Solas, I've no idea how I do any of it." She winces. "Ok, that's not strictly speaking true, but it's not that far off." He cocks his head to the side, mirroring her own skepticism. Margo wrinkles her nose. "Can't you ask for something simpler?"

He laughs softly. "Such as?" Apparently, the proximity — and probably the rum, who is she kidding — are having an effect on him as well. His hands relocate to her thighs, the touch cool through the fabric.

"A brooch? A handkerchief? A kiss? You know, the usual." Margo allows herself to trail a finger along the shell of his ear. Solas shudders.

"The latter, at least, is as freely given as it is received. Or so I hoped."

Fuck it. "You have another offer you might collect upon."

Solas's expression takes a sharp turn for the melancholy. "I will not hold you to it."

"And why not?"

He swallows. "I would not lie with you under false pretenses, vhenan."

Margo snorts. "There are no pretenses, Solas — a whole lot of obfuscating, but not exactly false considering we both know it. If this exercise demonstrated anything, it's that we're both willing to do serious intellectual acrobatics to let the other know how much we'd rather avoid lying to each other."

He stills. "And you would consider this sufficient?"

"Not in the slightest, but the night is young, as they say." She covers his hands with her own. "Besides, if I am to dream with you, I should probably be sleepy first."

He shakes his head — an odd, half-hearted denial — but his hands trail up. Margo parts her thighs. Solas sways closer, now mere inches away. His palms rest against her hips, as much for balance as anything else — at first, anyway. And then his thumbs trace the lines of her hip bones, pressing lightly into the sensitive hollows beneath. She exhales around the sudden jolt of heat.

In retrospect she's not at all sure how they end up on the floor — whether he pulls her off the chair, or whether she slides off on her own accord, but by that point they are both beyond caring about the specifics. Clothes are peeled off, tangling along the way. They manage to make enough room for laughter to smooth over the mishaps until nothing besides bare skin remains.

They never make it to the bed. She grips his shoulders as he hoists her up on the table — she knocks over a wine glass, a hand thrown out to keep her balance. Solas shoves The History of the Chantry, Volume 2 to the side, and it hits the floorboard with a muffled thump.

He really does run cold, Margo thinks. Something about different metabolisms. The thought goes exactly nowhere. His lips find the hollow beneath her ear, his hands trace the contour of her breasts, again with that unresolved caress that has her arching into his palms with a needy moan on her lips. He takes his time to oblige the wordless demands, nothing if not methodical. The meaningless mind chatter fades away.

Eventually, she reaches down to align them, but he pulls back a fraction, slowing their momentum long enough to meet her gaze, a question there, left unarticulated. "See," Margo breathes out, somehow managing a vague approximation of irony. Her body protests her newfound chattiness, the sweet tug in her lower belly blooming into aching heat as Solas presses against her — again, so close, but maddeningly insufficient. "No need to worry about who lies... with whom. Technically, this one doesn't even count. We're vertical."

Her ill-timed witticism wrestles a dark chuckle from him. "Doesn't count ? I should certainly hope that it would count for something ."

"To be determined, isn't it?"

"Always with the provocations..." Solas traces her lower lip with his thumb — and with his gaze, his eyes dark. He cheats, too. Of course he cheats. A tingle is left in the wake of his touch, the same one Margo remembers him using prior to Redcliffe, when he was "fixing" the long-suffering flower in her hair. The need to put her lips to good use is maddening. For once, the thought of Redcliffe brings no horror — instead, it conjures other vistas where that particular tingling technique might be deployed. Apparently, whatever expression she wears is not lost on the elf. His mouth curves into a small but rather self-congratulatory smile.

"You seem to require some nudging." Her current position doesn't afford much range of motion, but Margo locks her ankles at the small of his back, grips the edge of the table, and lifts herself off — enough to arch her spine and rock her hips forward in a single motion. The movement breaches the final distance. Liquid heat, a moment of resistance, and then the sudden sensation of fullness just at the painful edge of pleasure wrenches a startled moan from her. Solas gasps and grinds into her, his palms slamming against the table with a thud.

The treacherous piece of furniture chooses this moment to slide backward, and for a few precarious seconds they vacillate on the cusp of losing their balance, the jolt of vertigo mixing with the hormonal high. The table crashes into the back wall. Solas throws out a hand to catch the bottle of rum before it spills — not fast enough, and it rolls away and comes to rest against the wall. They choose to ignore it. By that point, of course, Margo is long past caring — the damn house could collapse around them, and she would be unlikely to notice. Solas cups her ass, his grip tight against her skin. She rocks her hips again, her pelvis no longer under conscious control. He meets her half-way, his movement slow at first — almost tentative. The caution erodes with another thrust, and then another, and then they lose themselves to the mounting rhythm. He grabs her hair with one hand — her braid came undone at a point she can't quite recall, not that it matters — and pulls her head back, his lips and teeth at her throat.

After her first orgasm crests and crashes over her like a tidal wave, and Margo goes limp and shaky in his arms, Solas slows down to ease her through the aftershocks. She can still taste the faint hint of rum and alien herbs on his tongue. He breaks the kiss with an apologetic "wait," and takes the opportunity to cast a belated muffling spell. The first attempt fails. He curses incomprehensibly, casts one more time, his hips already moving in slow, deep strokes. Margo manages to mobilize enough muscle coordination to push the candle out of her way before collapsing back against the wooden surface of the table. He growls and hooks one arm under her knee, tilting her pelvis to deepen the fit, the half-finished spell forgotten. The fingers of his other hand work her towards another climax, on the reverb of the previous one. "No longer committed to verticality?" he grinds out. His rhythm turns urgent, then ragged.

She arches her back, her body clenching around him with her own building pleasure — as well as with a bout of helpless chortling. "One of us... still standing... technically... not counting it..." she gasps.

They come together in breathless laughter.

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by Rivaini rum._

 _Also, Percy Shelley's Ozymandias. Here it is in its full version:_

 _I met a traveller from an antique land,_  
 _Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone_  
 _Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,_  
 _Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,_  
 _And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,_  
 _Tell that its sculptor well those passions read_  
 _Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,_  
 _The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;_  
 _And on the pedestal, these words appear:_  
 _My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;_  
 _Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!_  
 _Nothing beside remains. Round the decay_  
 _Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare_  
 _The lone and level sands stretch far away."_

 _Next up: Things fall apart_


	83. Chapter 83: Root and Branch

_In which Margo sees a Tree, and tiny secrets are exchanged. CW: Please note, mild NSWF content, read accordingly_

* * *

That night, she does not attempt to fill her part of the bargain and weave for him. They sleep little. They drift between dozing and the hypnotic daze of soft touches in the dark, lips and hands and skin on skin, caught in the shimmering space at the edge of the Dreaming where time distorts and folds on itself. Closer to morning, when the noises of the festivities outside finally die down, the hearth fire burns out and the air turns chilly. Margo stirs, trying to talk herself into restacking it, but Solas's arms tighten around her. He nuzzles her neck with a sleepy, "Leave it, ma'nas." She can feel him harden against the curve of her ass, his fingers tracing lazy circles over her breast — never more than a hint of things to come, until Margo inches higher with a shuddering sigh, adjusting her hips in an invitation he receives with a soft chuckle against her nape.

"Again, vhenan?"

"You have somewhere else you need to be?"

His quiet laughter is almost devoid of its habitual bitter finish. "Two days of mandated idleness yet remain. I suppose it would be shameful to waste such a rare opportunity." He lifts up on an elbow and leans forward. In the darkness, she can't quite make out his expression, but she can hear the smile in his voice. "Unless you do, in fact, wish me elsewhere?"

Margo snorts, but beneath the elf's cheeky innuendo, a serious question lurks. He holds himself very still, waiting for her response.

"I can't tell whether you're being exceptionally grim and fatalistic — or just greedy."

"I am grim and fatalistic," Solas demures with a chuckle. "And if you must choose yet another dubious epithet, then I would prefer 'thorough.'" He draws back a fraction, putting some space between them. "Jests aside, I would not wish to assume that an invitation issued once equates to any permanent claim on your... time."

Margo smiles into the murky darkness. "An invitation issued twice, if you want to be technical. Anyway. Consider it reissued." She shimmies against him and arches her back. Solas inhales sharply, but his earlier compunctions erode, and he eases into her with deliberate slowness. They move together, sleepy and sated enough not to rush to the finish.

Afterward, as they lay tangled, sweat cooling on their skin, Margo hogs the blanket and drifts off.

The Tree comes to her then — an impossibility beyond her capacity to comprehend and almost outside of her ability to perceive. So monstrous it is in its vastness that looking at it, even from the shallows of the Dreaming, causes physical anguish. In retrospect, she could not say with any certainty what makes it tree-like. The vaguely dendritic structure of what might be called its branches patterns into infinity in a soaring dome that tucks itself into a horizon of countless fractal multiplications. Its trunk is total absence, a column of negative space so absolute it might as well be the Void itself — and yet, over its improbable surface that isn't a surface at all, dark storms roil and ripple. Its roots twine, and burrow, and stretch into the essence of all things, though that analogy is woefully inadequate — they are the essence of all things, the armature of what exists and what does not, the veins of what is, what was, and what could come henceforth.

The vision morphs with the sickening feeling of Margo's perception being turned inside out like a sock. A radical reduction across incommensurable scales — and in the next instant, the Tree is tiny, a miniature that would fit into the palm of her hand. She panics, certain that another perspectival shift would either leave her with brain damage or kill her outright. She struggles against the vision, but it is no use. She is trapped like a fly in a spiderweb. She would scream if she could — if she had a mouth to scream with.

"Nézze, a szívem! Nézze! Look! " Baba's voice slices through the soundless horror, and Margo's attention is shoved into the labyrinth of the Tree's "canopy." A segment — each tiny part containing infinite multitudes — twists and fragments into endless iterations. One section comes into focus — or, rather, it focuses her , fastening her awareness to the scarlet polyps that jut out in jarring disorder, ponderous and patternless, like some grotesque fruit. "Know what ripens, lelkem, " Baba's voice urges. " Know what spreads ."

It never occurs to her to refuse. She tries to follow the crimson tendrils, boring into the branch alongside them like a tiny bark beetle, but they extend too far, too deep, and she is too small. Still, she persists, burrowing further, inching towards their thickenings, to the source. There is noise to their color, a melodic pattern, like whispers in another language, the tune of another lifeform beyond ken. And then, at the very edges of her capacity to perceive it, Margo gets a glimpse of the terrible, alien order beneath their entropic distribution...

I can't. The dream crumbles as she wrenches herself out of it, horror freezing her insides. A sense of disappointment — or disapproval — clings to her consciousness like cobwebs, but she is too damn terrified to care at that moment what the old woman's future scolding might entail. I'm not that brave, Baba.

Margo forces her eyes to open. The effort is monumental — as if her eyelids have been glued shut. The world wobbles, but, at length, something floats into focus. For a few seconds, she has absolutely no idea where she is. A table, its surface in disarray. The contents of a bottle spilled along the wall and into a drying puddle below. Books and notes on the floor. In her stupor, she reads the spine. History of the Chantry. Vol 2.

She sits up with difficulty. The familiar interior of the cabin anchors her in the present — in the real, the material — and the Tree, cosmic awfulness that it is, recedes to the contours of an impossible dream world.

Beside her, Solas is asleep, and she stares at his prone form, struck thoughtless by his utter alienness . Something as mundane as sleep is anything but. The lines on his face have smoothed out to the point of almost inanimate flawlessness — his skin perfectly even, like marble polished for the viewing pleasure of an anonymous spectator and not a lived-in surface prone to wear and tear and the embodied emotional habits of everyday life. Even his scars seem ornamental rather than functional. His chest rises and falls in a rhythm so regular it borders on automation. His body in repose appears vacant, as if stuck in suspension and waiting for the spark of life to reanimate it.

He could at least have the decency to snore — or anything else that would make him appear less like some arcane craftsman's pet project.

Who in the everloving hell am I sleeping with ?

Margo rubs her face, trying to coax some semblance of normalcy back into the moment, but the uncanny valley is having none of it. Next thing you know, it'll be gigantic mushrooms and talking caterpillars with a hashish habit.

Right. One thing at a time. Solas certainly didn't confirm her spirit hypothesis outright — but it is quite possible that he did corroborate it through intentional refusal. Or at least corroborated some aspect of it. And now that her brain is overtaken by mildly hungover post-coital anxiety, the implications of that little revelation have set up camp and brought their embarrassing buddies with them. Such as, if he was a spirit at one point, how did he avail himself of a body in the first place? And why would spirits want to have sex, to begin with — how did they evolve for sexual reproduction? From what she remembers of Cole's cryptic explanations — and from her own restoration of Constancy — transactions with most Fade denizens seem more... vegetative. Or perhaps something akin to gene swapping. Though, considering Imshael's advances, it just might be a mixture of both, which begs the question of why? And perhaps more relevantly, if Solas is a spirit, then a spirit of what ?

The unpleasant idea — heretofore amorphously niggling at the back of her attention — smashes through her mind with all the subtlety of a semi transporting nitroglycerin down a winding mountain road. What if Solas's hedging around his origins has to do with the duality of what counts as a spirit in the first place? In other words, what if he is not a spirit at all — but the less inoffensive counterpart? There is a reason, after all, for why Imshael keeps insisting — or downright staging — their symmetry.

Before the sheer terror of the thought consumes her, Margo forces herself to refocus on what she does know. Back to wolves. What do wolves symbolize in Thedas? Surely, expecting the symbolism to resonate with her own cultural habits would be yet another exercise in ethnocentrism. But then again... " A fene farkas egye meg !" Baba liked to swear, twisting the common "damn it" to its more archaic variant whenever the old woman's linguistic code of choice was Hungarian — though Baba tended to gravitate to Slavic languages for her curses. "May the blighted wolf eat it." Blight accounted for, wolves accounted for — it's not even such a wild translational stretch. Maybe she should introduce the expression to Thedas and see if it takes.

Margo forces herself to take a breath, then another one, and then she eyes the pile of books that somehow managed to survive the previous night's activities on the long-suffering table — a statement to how monumental the tomes are. Linguistic speculations aside, she has her work cut out for her. She'll start with the one Solas made a show of not choosing, still on the shelf — the one with the tree on the spine.

Solas stirs. Even before his eyes open, his lips pinch in an expression of mild disapproval as his arms try to close around the now empty space at his side — and the eerie spell of his otherness dissolves, leaving in its wake an unexpected wave of anxious tenderness, somehow a direct product of their incommensurability rather than their similarities. An interspecies intimacy. Margo tries to kick the strange emotion under the rug, but the mental room decor is impersonating linoleum and doing an awful job at camouflaging her pile of unprocessed crap.

Solas's hand comes to rest on her lower back, his uneasy expression resolving into a rather self-satisfied little smirk. He opens his eyes, warmth settling into them. "If you are planning a strategic exit, ma'nas, might I convince you to reconsider? Or did you not... sleep well?"

"I..." Margo swallows. "The not sleeping part was much more pleasant than the sleeping part, if you must know." Her mind snaps back to the vision of the Tree — and the spread of misshapen crimson polyps. Red. Exactly like the lyrium of Alexius's crapsack model. "I had an odd dream, actually." The understatement of the century.

His earlier playfulness evaporates. Whatever Solas sees in her features snaps him into full focus, and he sits up. To give credit where it is due, his eyes glide only briefly over her naked skin before he meets her gaze. "What did you see?"

Shit. Margo pulls the blanket around herself and reaches for his hand, interlacing her fingers with his in a gesture of reassurance, though whether undertaken for his benefit or hers, she isn't sure. One way or another, it buys her a moment to think. The cat is out of the bag, so she needs to saysomething , and lying outright feels wrong — a betrayal of their odd, fragile arrangement. Besides, who better to ask about dangerous and unexplainable Fade phenomena? The dream doesn't feel like some random, abstract nightmare.

She isn't entirely sure why she wants to keep the Tree to herself. Cole, after all, told her rather explicitly to "trade" for it. Still, she dithers. Maybe because it's too tightly tangled up with Baba, and Baba is too tightly tangled up with the events of Redcliffe. Or maybe it's because of what Goran wrote about the National Hero in his cryptic missive — and the National Hero, in turn, is a subject to be treated with great care if she wants to keep on the right side of Torquemada's more unsavory habits. A tangled web indeed. But there must be some common ground, some mutually acceptable territory on which they can meet. For all her quips the night before about their newfound intimacy not "counting," there is something that feels markedly different about this emotional space, though she isn't quite sure what that something is. It is as if the actual rules of engagement are being determined now, and not during their earlier questions and answers match.

"Solas, what is red lyrium, exactly? In my dream, it looked like... an infection of sorts. Or a parasite."

"What did it infect?"

Damn it. Leave it to the clever elf to ask the relevant question. "The world," Margo offers after a pause. Then she shakes her head. Not sufficient, and not accurate. "A world's conditions of possibility," she amends.

He gives her a startled, complicated look, but then he simply nods in acknowledgment. "What I can say with certainty is that it thins the Veil wherever it is found, allowing spirits to enter into contact with the physical side with greater ease." His expression is faraway, focused inward. "It would appear that after the Breach opened, it began to multiply on the surface, in quantities heretofore unseen."

Margo ponders this. "The blood ward over Haven — could it be the reason we haven't seen any red lyrium here?"

"I suppose it is possible, although I am unsure whether that was its intended function or merely an epiphenomenal effect."

He needs to know. It's one thing to keep him in the dark about Baba and all the other crap she's managed to step into with both feet while stumbling around in her new world — it's an altogether different thing to withhold the connection between the ward and Evie. She doesn't need to reveal National Hero's presumed origins for that — everyone knows he was a mage, and, outworlder or not, his motivations remain murky either way.

"Solas, I need to show you something."

She extricates herself from the covers, collects the clothes strewn around the floor, and gets dressed. After a moment, Solas follows her example. He pads around the room, entirely at ease in his nakedness as he locates his garments — somehow, his tunic ended up halfway across the hut. Margo finds herself staring at the elegant lines of his shoulders and back — and the rest of him. He cuts quite the figure. And then she gives herself a firm mental kick, another timeless Babaism surfacing in her mind — there is more to a man than a shapely backside, little thistle — and she proceeds to rummage through her pack until she locates Goran's grease-stained missive.

Margo quickly tidies up the disaster on the table and pulls up a chair. (She's not entirely sure when it got knocked over.) Solas joins her, after magicking away the alcohol stains and returning the History of the Chantry to its spot on the shelf.

"After Sera got me away from Redcliffe, I made a friend, of sorts," Margo begins. "I'm not entirely sure what he is, exactly, but he seems to have some interesting insights."

A shadow passes over Solas's face, but he folds his fingers under his chin, expression attentive.

"Ignore the linguistic peculiarities — he talks like this too — but tell me what you think." Margo hands Solas the note and watches his eyes move over the text until they hitch on some aspect of the letter. After a moment, he continues reading, then returns to an earlier part.

"I do not pretend to understand this talk of trees, omelettes, and haystacks, but the portion about the 'roomy lizard' likely refers to a dragon."

Margo nods. "Yes. The ambassador lent me a book before we went off to see the rift-worshippers. Something called Before Andrastianism . Did you know that Haven was the site of a cult dedicated to a dragon? I'm beginning to think that might have been Goran's 'roomy lizard.'"

"The Disciples of Andraste, yes. My understanding is that the official Chantry opinion of that cult dismisses its members as misguided recluses, engaged in the worship of a high dragon, which they believed to be Andraste reborn. A group of madmen led astray by centuries of isolation and inbreeding, according to Chantry doctrine."

"Until National Hero wiped them out, yes." Margo points her chin at the letter. "There's more."

Solas skims the text again. Margo keeps her face deliberately neutral and watches her companion's frown resolve into astonishment, then understanding. The shift of expression is subtle but unmistakable. " Hides surprise under floorboards, " he reads out loud and lifts his gaze from the page. "Ah. This does potentially solve the mystery of how the blood ward was created. Unless the Hero of Ferelden used the dragon's blood to animate the spell."

Margo nods. "I think the 'surprise' took a choreographed stroll at Evie's behest. But look at the other part. Makes net, for later. Keep in, or keep out ? So far, Haven has been free of demons, at least on the physical side," she carefully sidesteps the problem of Imshael's most recent Fade visit "and free of red lyrium."

"A curious fact, considering we have encountered both everywhere else. It is possible that the magic that created the Breach pulled on the lyrium beneath the Temple of Sacred Ashes, corrupting it in the process. The reason for its presence in other places is less self-evident." He leans back with a speculative squint. "A surprise under the floorboards, and a net... for later . I wonder, ma'nas, whether this odd temporal accounting is an artifact of your friend's approach to time — or that of the man who stopped the Fifth Blight."

Margo smiles tightly. "Has the Fade kept a record of the events of the last Blight?"

"It has, more so in some locales than in others."

She waits for him to elaborate.

"I dreamt at Ostagar. I witnessed the brutality of the darkspawn and the valor of the Fereldan warriors. I saw Alistair and the Hero of Ferelden light the signal fire... and Loghain's infamous betrayal of Cailan's forces."

"But the Fade is a matter of amalgamated perspectives, isn't it? It shouldn't produce a singular story."

He smiles. "Of course. One moment, I see heroic Grey Wardens lighting the fire and a power-mad villain sneering as he lets King Cailan fall. The next, I see an army overwhelmed and a veteran commander refusing to let more soldiers die in a lost cause."

"But that's just one side, isn't it? What about these darkspawn?"

A line etches itself between his eyebrows. "If the darkspawn attacking the Ferelden forces had a view on these events, they left no imprint of it in the Fade."

"Interesting. What about Haven? Is there anything in the Fade here — other than the ward — that might tell us what really happened with National Hero?"

Solas's frown deepens. "That's just it, ma'nas. No spirits here remain that bore witness to these events. I attributed this to the proximity of the Breach, but..." He remains silent for a few moments. "Leliana and the Hero of Ferelden were rather well acquainted — if the stories of their journeys are to be believed."

He waits for her to respond. Danger, Will Robinson.

"How much do you want to bet that's a matter of perspective, too?"

He chuckles quietly. "It would depend. What would we be playing for?" At her skeptical look, Solas hands Margo the letter, his fingers brushing against hers as if by accident. She squashes the sudden flutters — blasted butterflies, can't they see she's busy?

"Have you noticed anything strange since you've been back to Haven?" As long as she can skirt around the reasons behind Torquemada's latest maneuvering and simply point out its outwardly visible symptoms, there's no harm done, right? Dorian noticed. And she's pretty sure Bull did as well. And the advisors have been arguing over it. As far as secrets go, this one, at least, is a rather public one.

"A great deal of apparently rather contradictory preparations."

Margo breathes a sigh of relief. Oh good. She can't possibly be blamed for him guessing , right? "And what do you make of them?"

Solas's smile has a barbed edge. "I take it you do not mean the improvements to the tavern."

"No."

His gaze drifts out of focus. "In that case, I suppose you are referring to the surreptitious efforts to set the ground for a civilian evacuation while keeping the military personnel close at hand under the guise of rest."

Margo chuckles. "Exactly right."

His eyes return to hers. "It is a prudent plan. The Inquisition has grown — in social relevance as well as military might. And I still share Warden Blackwall's concerns regarding Haven's defensibility." His lips press into a hard line. "Of course, Haven's defenses may very well be more than what meets the waking eye."

She makes a noncommittal noise. Solas gives her a sharply amused look, but he doesn't push her for an elaboration, so Margo shrugs and forges on. "Now that we've closed the Breach... the proof of the Inquisition's relevance is in the pudding, as it were."

"A questionable location for proofs, but yes." He appears to reflect for a few moments, his gaze adrift once again. "Regardless, it would be wise if we undertook our own preparatory measures. Whoever was responsible for opening the Breach — this Elder One — will not sit idly by, now that the Inquisition has demonstrated the capacity to thwart his efforts." Solas surveys her with a worried cast to his eyes. "If an attack should come, ours will not be the first convoy to leave, fenor. Nor the second."

Margo chuckles sourly and props her cheek on her fist, fingers drumming an irritated rhythm against the table. "No, you will be on whichever convoy ushers Evie out of here, if the powers that be have any sense at all." She doesn't have to add that it is unlikely she will receive the same consideration — but the unspoken thought hovers between them, and Solas's face turns stony, a hard crease at the corner of his mouth the only indication of his thoughts on the subject.

When he speaks, his tone is taut as a bowstring. "And you believe that I would turn my back and walk away, content to leave you with those considered inecessantial, abandoned to slow down an enemy army so that the important people might escape."

"Well, maybe not content ." The jape turns bitter in her mouth, and Margo looks away, trying to find something to distract her from the sudden upwelling of rancor. She's being unfair. There is absolutely no point in dredging up Redcliffe — no good will come of it. What's done is done, there's no turning back the clock — Alexius, after all, tried just that, and he ended up mad as a box of frogs.

"I have made grave mistakes, ma'nas, most of which bear no undoing. I would like to think that I will not repeat the same ones, at least." There is an odd finality to his words — and such a generous helping of self-loathing — that she finds herself drawing back to look at the elf. He holds himself still under her scrutiny. Margo is about to say some resigned platitude about duty, but she doesn't get the chance. "If you believe this to be the likely outcome, then... You must go now." His words are rushed, edged with an odd vehemence. "I counseled you to do so before. This is not your fight, heart. Take your Avvar mentor — I suspect he would be more than happy to oblige your request if it will secure you to h-... his clan — and leave." He averts his gaze in a somewhat futile attempt to hide his expression.

The absurdity of it is so monumental that Margo can't help herself — it starts with a snort, and then devolves into a fit of hilarity that is one flimsy step away from demented cackling. "Solas..." She hiccups with laughter, which leads the elf to adopt a confused, if mildly annoyed expression — one that does nothing to ease her giggling. "A fene egye meg, csillagom... " It takes her a few tries to manage to form coherent words and corral them into Common. Solas crosses his arm over his chest in a pantomime of impatient irascibility. "How can someone so intelligent be such an obtuse ass?!" Margo finally chokes out, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes.

"Ah, more flattery, I see. And a step above your usual reptilian analogies, no less." Despite his dry tone, there is a little flicker of mirth in his eyes, and Margo reaches out and brushes her thumb across his knuckles, the nascent tension between them rerouted in a different direction. He exhales — in relief, or resignation — and captures her hand before she can retract it.

Her erstwhile dream extends its monstrous canopy in her mind's eye, and Margo squeezes Solas's fingers, her earlier amusement replaced with a deep sense of foreboding. Perhaps there is a world out there where she takes his advice. A world where National Hero was not a transplant from a New York City with a mangled skyline, playing some unfathomable puppeteering game with the lives of those who trusted him. A world where she never saw a lyrium-riddled husk dying with blood and words of love on his lips, fully convinced of his reality, and fully ready to relinquish his life on the hope that his world would not come to pass. Perhaps there is a Margo somewhere who has been spared the Tree, and Imshael, and Evie's cosmic castling. Instead of all that, she looks up. "Is it your fight, Solas?"

She expects an evasion, but not the one he offers. "I wish that it were not." He looks like he's struggling against the desire to add something else, the familiar internal contradiction hardening his features into a brittle mask. "Vhenan... I currently hold little use to the Inquisition beyond my ability to stabilize the Herald's mark, but I will wield what influence I do possess if... it should come to that."

Margo narrows her eyes. "Whatever you do, you can't endanger Evie."

Her admonishment is met with a grim chortle. "I am still capable of some degree of subtlety, fenor, despite my thoughts being too often occupied... elsewhere, as of late." He exhales slowly, as if bracing himself against whatever comes next. "You trusted me with this —," he gestures at the letter still in her hand, "— and I would reciprocate, if you would allow it."

Margo nods, fear unfurling in the pit of her stomach. As if in echo of her apprehensions, something awfully close to dread flashes in Solas's eyes. He draws a breath. "The magic of the mark is slipping beyond my ability to exert power over it. I will eventually become unable to modulate its fluctuations."

Before Margo has a chance to ask the obvious question, they both jerk at the loud knock on the door. "All right, you two, rise and shine." Varric. Of course. "Prickly, put some clothes on and come along, will you? We have some blond Orlesian type — claims to be a friend of yours — asking to see you." A pause. "Chuckles, you too. Could use a healer."

* * *

 _Chapter endnotes:  
_

This chapter was brought to you by the Axis Mundi and Hungarian curses

Translations:

Nézze, a szívem! - Look, my heart.  
A fene egye meg, csillagom! - Damn it, darling.  
Lelkem - "my soul" (term of endearment)

As always, thank you for following Margo on her misadventures, and leaving kudos and comments! The next chapter is written, it'll go up quicker than this one, universe willing.

Also, for your convenience, here's the text of Goran's letter in case you wanted to check back on what it said.

Nested Doll,

Toothpaste good? Works?  
Friends in high places, old Goran hears. Higher places soon. If alive.  
Bees come home, dance dance dance, show the way. Sometime show where not go, yes? Sometime show who else coming.  
Nice nested doll ask good questions, yes? So. Goran tell story, nested doll open ears and listen.  
Long ago. Goran old, remembers. Clever young man. Climbs Tree, sees much. Falls off branch. Wakes up, thinks knows. Makes things better, yes? Saves world. Be hero.  
Tree tricky, yes? But young man clever! Knows better! Sees old lizard, blood useful. Ashes? Not so useful. Changes coming, big changes. Break eggs, make omelette. So spill, spill, spill, bleed a few, get hands dirty. Worth it, yes?  
Makes net. For later. Keep in, or keep out?  
Hides surprise under floorboards. Found it?  
But. Big lizard, roomy, secret inside. Like egg with needle, hidey hide, good trick, that. Break egg, lose needle. Haystack, yes? Pretty little princess pricks finger. Dreams things. Learn much, grow old fast.  
Understood? No? Ask good questions.  
Long journey ahead. Burden heavy, road short. Burden light, road long. Carry dead, not get far.  
Dress warm. For winter. Mind the wolves.

Goran

Next up: De Chevin, medical procedures, alarming news.


	84. Chapter 84: A Study in Scarlet

_In which Michel de Chevin returns from his erring, bearing bad news._

* * *

Morning-after Haven has a severe case of Postapocalypsis vulgaris . During the night, the village streets had been mashed into snowy mud — which come morning proceeded to freeze into jagged edges and treacherous patches of ice. Chunks of broken barrels, miscellaneous furniture debris, an assortment of empty bottles and pottery shards that might one day be meticulously documented by a very excited archaeologist, and even a few garments — some of them of the more intimate variety — litter the central grounds. A few tents are pitched where no tents should be, and Varric, at the helm of their trio, just shakes his head, dodging a lumpy, questionably clean bedroll that might or might not contain a sleeping — or dead — reveler. The dwarf is walking remarkably quickly, and Margo has to break into a light jog just to keep up.

"Looks like things really got going after we left," she muses at the dwarf's brightly colored, velveteen-clad back.

"Well, let's see." Varric gestures expansively at the general state of affairs without breaking his stride. "Three brawls — four, if you count the duel; two orgies — three, if you count the one where Bull was convinced there were two Chantry sisters, not just the one he was seeing in duplicate; and... I stopped keeping a tab on the destruction of Inquisition property once we got the Twins to play tug-o'-war."

"Sounds like an eventful night," Solas comments with perfect neutrality, but the glance he throws Margo conceals a rather sardonic little smirk. She quirks an eyebrow in warning — the last thing she needs is a certain auteur to take this as a conversation opener for undoubtedly mortifying prying — purely for "writerly purposes," of course.

"Oh, but I bet you two more than made up for what you missed out here," Varric deadpans. "Good thing some folks received a pretty vehement little note from the powers that be not to overindulge, eh? Because otherwise, Prickly, your Orlesian friend would still be banging at the gates — or bleeding out all over them, more likely." Varric takes a sharp right towards Lud's infirmary. "Where'd you find him, anyway? Because, I gotta say... even Fenris at his most Hawke-addled — before Hawke swung to Blondie, for better or for worse... Oh, who am I kidding, definitely for worse... wasn't quite this bad."

Margo scowls, but Varric's back fails to be suitably impressed by her expression. Solas, at her side, makes a little noise of amused irritation — though his face remains perfectly placid. "How did things proceed with your errant knight, ma'nas?" he inquires.

"Oh, you mean after he and Sera fetched me from Redcliffe?" Margo asks sweetly.

"Indeed." Solas doesn't miss a beat. "It would appear that you availed yourself of a few allies in that process."

Margo just shakes her head. Leave it to the elf to connect the dots. The unspoken question — whether de Chevin might be acquainted with Goran — hangs unresolved between them.

They come to a halt in front of the infirmary door, and Varric pushes it open without knocking. They are greeted by the scent of blood, burning herbs, and boiling fabric. The space inside is surprisingly well-lit, the windows cracked open to let in the morning sun. The rows of cots are mostly empty, and the few patients present do not appear to be in critical condition. Which is why de Chevin sticks out like an extremely sore thumb, and when she spots him Margo hisses in shock. Ser Lancelot the Worse for Wear looks decidedly awful. He is reclined on the cot, pale as a shroud against the furs bunched up around him. His shirt clings to his chest, the fabric soggy and smeared with blood and lymph. A bandage is wound tightly around his head. Beneath it, his face is bruised to a mottled black, the left cheekbone grotesquely swollen, the skin over it distended, with a sickly sheen to it. Despite the injuries, he is conscious, and when one pale eye lands on Margo — the left one is swollen shut — he exhales, his features, distorted as they are, registering unmistakable relief.

In the corner of the infirmary, Lud is plonking surgical tools into a steam pot. She doesn't turn at their entrance. "Finally. Sure took your sweet time. I said he was stable, not well . I need more healing potions — take care of that, apprentice. Restoratives, human-tailored, nothing too fast-acting. And one lyrium potion, low concentration. Solas, I could use assistance with controlling the bleeding. As to you, Tethras, don't see what kind of use you'll be, but since there's no getting rid of you either way, log the minutes while I work."

Margo doesn't need to be asked twice — she pivots on her heels and takes off back towards the apothecary. It occurs to her that they could have saved themselves a step if only Varric had mentioned how badly off de Chevin actually is. Still, she makes it to the hut quickly enough, immensely relieved to discover that Clemence already opened up shop. She rattles off Lud's request, and the Tranquil issues three vials with an impassive, "My salutations to Senior Medic Hludwiga."

She runs back to the infirmary and bursts through the door, winded, her lungs burning from the cold and the exertion. Lud and Solas are on each side of de Chevin. Both sport identical expressions of intense concentration. "Get the draughts over here, lass. You'll be dosing him — mind that you don't give him too much at once, or the healing process will go too fast. We can't have the wound reknit before I remove the shards. Solas, keep him from bleeding out while I cut."

Margo meets Ser Lancelot the Not So Healthy's eyes, and he holds her gaze, some impatient, troubled emotion just beneath the surface of pained exhaustion. As if he is itching to speak but chooses to hold his tongue.

Margo pulls up a stool to position herself at their patient's bedside and measures out some of the restorative into the spoon Lud hands her. She brings it to the former chevalier's lips, and he sips at the liquid, his throat laboring around each swallow. The odd intimacy of his physical vulnerability makes Margo feel amorphously embarrassed. On the other side of the former chevalier, Solas casts her a brief glance, but he redirects his attention to his work before she can read his expression. Magic pools beneath the elf's fingers with a gust of iodine and ionization, a translucent weave that pulses but does not absorb into the mangled skin beneath. The muscles of Solas's neck are corded with the effort to hold the spell aloft. Lud cuts the shirt off de Chevin's torso, the gentleness of her gestures a stark contrast to the verbal aspect of her bedside manner. In the meantime, Varric installs himself behind a desk, extracts a pair of spectacles from his coat pocket, and turns the giant ledger in front of him at a diagonal, ink and quill at the ready.

"What happened?" Margo asks as she feeds Ser Lancelot the Gravely Injured another spoonful of tonic.

He barks out a bitter chuckle that devolves into an alarmingly wet coughing fit. "I have obtained some answers to my questions, but I fear sharing them with you will have to wait," he finally manages. "I have come to warn you. There is an army marching through the Deep Roads. I believe it is intent on Haven."

"Less talking, more focusing on not twitching," Lud scowls. "This'll hurt."

"Did you try to take on said army all by your lonesome?" Margo is not entirely sure when she and Ser Asshat established this classic instantiation of a "joking relationship," but it beats considering the alternative — up close, there is something distinctly off about the fellow. She can't quite put her finger on it, but her arms break out in goosebumps in an atavistic need to fluff up and make herself look bigger. Maybe it's the smell. Familiar. Like burned rubber.

"I am a bastard, my lady. Not a fool. I ran afoul of a patrol. As you can see, the odds were not in my favor."

The shirt finally comes off, and Margo makes the mistake of looking down. "Oh, fuck a duck," she mutters before she can bite back the obscenity. It earns her a chuckle from Varric — and the sound of a quill scratching on paper — but Margo's too busy staring at the wound. The slash itself doesn't look that deep — though it is long and wide, running across de Chevin's chest in a diagonal, from the upper pectoral down over the sternum, and then twisting and deepening in the area of his solar plexus. Bad, but she's seen Solas fix graver injuries — Blackwall looked much worse after the Templar skirmish in the Hinterlands. Not to mention her fall off the ramparts. No, the thing that has her holding her breath is the perversely charming glitter of red crystals.

"Less commenting, more dispensing the restorative," Lud instructs in her usual curt tone. "Now, as you can see, we need to get the red shite out of him. Lucky for you, Orlais, it hasn't touched any vital organs from what I can tell, and because it heats up it's cauterized much of your wound, so you didn't bleed out. But that doesn't mean we're out of hot water. Seen this happen with regular lyrium during mining accidents, and let me tell you, it's a bitch to treat, and that's for dwarves — never tried on a human before. Good news is, it numbs the pain. Bad news? Once I clean out the debris, you'll be feeling it."

De Chevin's jaw tightens, and he turns to Margo with something awfully close to desperation. "Margo, ecoutez moi." It takes her a few moments to register the linguistic shift. His French is heavily accented, though she can't quite place the pronunciation. Margo nods for him to continue. "Le groupe qui m'attaqua se composait de templiers et de mages Tévintide. Les templiers étaient déformés, corrompus par le lyrium rouge. Au cas où ça s'est déjà enraciné, ne me laissez pas devenir l'une de ces horreures grotesques. Même si... Je vous... je t'en prie, promets moi. J'aimerais mourir en étant moi-même."

"Si tu penses que je vais laisser cette saloperie rouge te tuer, tu m'connais vraiment mal, de Chevin."

"Je te connais bien mieux que tu ne le crois." A flash of white teeth. "Têtue comme une mule."

"Oy, lad! Less making eyes at my alchemist, more sitting still and letting me work. In case you haven't noticed, Orlais, you're in no shape to flirt, but Tethras here will find you a looking glass if you need a reminder. Now be quiet, stop twisting your head around, and try not to flex anything. Don't want the shards to sink deeper into the muscle. Solas, heal in my tracks. We'll start with the bigger pieces, here, and here. Then we'll flush out the smaller ones."

"All excellent suggestions," Solas comments, rather dryly at that.

Varric, who has abandoned any pretense of writing and has drifted over to the cot, sports a spectacular frown. "All right, Champion, I gotta ask. How exactly did you manage to get this shit embedded in yourself?"

"You're supposed to write the report, Tethras, not badger my patient with questions that can wait. Back to it."

"It's red lyrium, Splints, not a Mabari nip. Do you know how dangerous this shit is?"

"If you don't want me to throw your surfacer arse out of here, you'll heed a warning when it's given. Now. Apprentice. Three spoons of restorative for the next one. Orlais, you hanging in there?"

De Chevin, pale but resolute, grunts in acquiescence.

From there, they work in silence. Margo dispenses the restorative whenever Lud motions at her with the pair of silver-coated pincers she is using to extract the crystal debris. After the bigger pieces are out, the medic dropping the shards into a copper bowl packed with snow, they take a short break. De Chevin's eyes are closed, but the muscles in his neck are taut with pain and the effort of stillness. Margo locates a clean rag and dabs at the sweat trickling down Ser Lancelot the Red Lyrium Porcupine's forehead and temples. She can hear Solas's breath, strained with the effort of holding the healing magic under close control so as not to flood the wound before all the lyrium is out. He looks up at her once, his brow furrowed, a question in his eyes.

"What is the likelihood of corruption, medic?" de Chevin asks into the sudden, tense silence. "I would know my chances now, before you labor on me further."

Lud, busy emptying the lyrium potion Margo brought into a freshly steamed sack — one that might have been some small mammal's bladder in a past life — lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "They're better than they were when we started, lad, I can tell you that. Now, you're lucky this wasn't the raw stuff. What did you say did this? A claw?"

"Not a claw." Ser Lancelot the Profoundly Grossed Out winces, goes green around the gills — or more green than he already was — and represses a shudder. "I believe it used to be his hand. Or his arm."

"Either way, I'll need a sample of the raw crystals to compare it to, but I'd wager the derivative is a lot less potent."

"How can you tell?" Margo blurts out. It didn't take her too long to put two and two together — whatever attacked de Chevin must bear some sort of resemblance to the red-lyrium-encrusted characters of Alexius's crapsack modeling. Weaponized, based on the evidence gathered. "You mentioned something about its temperature..."

"That's right — this type gives off less heat, for one," Lud supplies. "Aside from that, I have to test it. And consult with an arcanist, if we can track one down in time. Now, listen up here, Orlais, what I'm about to do isn't standard procedure. Best case, it's a hunch. Worst case... Well, worst case, it won't do you any good. I'm going to use a regular lyrium draught, diluted, to flush the small debris from the wound. Then I'll flush that out with salt water. And then Solas and I will patch you up."

"And then?" Lancelot the Stoic asks with commendable calm.

"And then, you will recount exactly what happened to you, Messere de Chevin," Torquemada supplies from the threshold. Behind her, Josephine is peering anxiously into the infirmary. "And you will share whatever information you might have on this army."

* * *

Translation of the French:

De Chevin: "[formal you] Margo, listen to me. The group that attacked me was composed of templars and Tevinter mages. The templars were deformed, corrupted by red lyrium. In case it has already taken root, don't let me become one of those grotesque horrors. Even if... You...[formal] I beg you [informal you], promise me. I want to die as myself."

Margo: [informal you] If you think I'm going to let this red shit kill you, de Chevin, you really know me poorly.

De Chevin: I know you much better than you think. Stubborn as a mule.

###

As always, a million thanks for following and leaving me your thoughts. This chapter was brought to you by Haven's very annoyed and hungover cleaning crew.

Next up: Rushed maneuvering

 **A quick author's note:** Lovely readers, my apologies about the less frequent updates. I'm in a bit of a bottle-neck on the beta-ing side of this fic, which means I'm rapidly running out of copyedited chapters. I have a nest-egg of about 8 chapters that are ready to go, and two more in the copyedit stage, so the updates have been coming more slowly than what I normally try to pull off, but until we're through the hold-up, it's going to be turtle's pace. You could catch up on the story on AO3 (where you can find me under paraparadigm) - that version of the story is more up-to-date because AO3 is my primary home for posting fic, or you can sit tight and wait for me to port everything here - either way, thank you for your patience.


	85. Chapter 85: Scorched Earth Policy

_In which the Powers That Be discuss strategy, some secrets come out, and Commander Rutherford is not on his best behavior._

* * *

The medical procedure designed to turn Ser Lancelot the Inlaid with Red Lyrium into Ser Lancelot the Laid Out and Resting (Leave My Sodding Patient Alone Can't You See the Lad Had Enough) takes the better part of the next hour. The remaining patients file out one by one, equipped with prescriptions for the apothecary — which Lud dictates over her shoulder and Varric dutifully records — and terse admonishments to mind their humors. Margo quickly files away the new information for future cross-referencing. Minimally, the local medical idiom incorporates the element of "fire" — which isn't surprising, if Earth medical traditions are anything to go by — and "lightning," which she has no ready way of mapping. If there are other humors, Lud doesn't mention them.

Torquemada and Josephine depart shortly after their initial appearance, but then they return — very clearly with the intent to stay. Their numbers are soon augmented by two dubiously useful additions. Commander Rutherford arrives first, with the air of someone who has been asked to verify whether the monster rumored to be slaughtering the cattle and absconding with the local virgins has ten — or eleven — toes. At the sight of de Chevin and the bowl of red crystals, Cullen's expression veers off from sour annoyance, passes through queasy disbelief, and stops somewhere in the vicinity of grim resolve, though it isn't entirely clear to Margo what said resolve is directed at. Shortly after Rutherford takes up the task of ominously propping up the wall near the entrance, Cassandra arrives as well. A quick, wordless exchange ensues between Torquemada and the Seeker, which seems to suggest the existence of a previous conversation, prudently left out of public view.

Unfortunately for the Inquisition's finest, Ser Lancelot the Currently Indisposed loses consciousness as soon as Lud begins to clean the smaller debris. As the medic predicted, the pain must have caught up to him. Margo leans in to see whether any chemical reaction happens once the two types of lyrium encounter each other, but if it does, it isn't anything visible to the naked eye. The diluted lyrium draught does seem to clean out the wound remarkably well, the reddish particulate flaking off into the slightly viscous blue stream. Margo does her best to sponge up the mess with a quickly depleting supply of boiled rags. Her work gloves protect her hands from the runoff, but the sight of the reddish glitter still sets her teeth on edge. See what ripens, lelkem.

"All right, lass. Get me the spider silk while I rinse the blue out of him — might as well stitch him up." Lud wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. "Not much else we can do at this point."

Margo locates the bobbin of thread among Lud's surgical tools — gossamer-thin yet remarkably sturdy pearlescent silk that serves as another reminder of Thedas's armamentarium of unpleasant but useful fauna.

Solas, with visible relief, allows the healing spell to soak fully into the damaged tissues, and Margo wonders, not for the first time, whether the energy that powers his spells — or any other — depletes somewhere else. Is someone like Solas — on the surface, at least, a talented mage — a conduit, or a source himself? And if he is, originally, a spirit, then is the magic he practices qualitatively different from what other mages do? Vivienne, as far as she can tell, doesn't use healing magic. Neither does Dorian. Compared to them, Solas's range of abilities seems rather remarkable.

"Senior Medic, please excuse the interruption, but what are the chances that Messere de Chevin will emerge relatively... intact from his ordeal?" Josephine asks from the chair she is now occupying next to Varric.

Lud looks up, her expression made all the more grave by the austere inkwork that darkens the left side of her face. "From the slash? Not bad, unless a fever sets in. From the red shite?" She shakes her head. "Don't know for sure. Let him rest, for now."

"What caused the wound?" Cassandra's voice is terse, businesslike.

Lud bobs her head. "A templar. Like one of those red bastards in your reports from Therinfal. Beyond that, ask the lass. Orlais here had a whole speech prepared, but all I caught was something about horrors and lyrium."

Margo finds herself in the crosshairs of the Quadrumvirate's rather heavy gazes. Torquemada's eyes narrow. "Ah, your ever-useful roster of linguistic abilities, agent. What have you gleaned?"

Margo swallows. "From what I understood, he was attacked by a patrol composed of deformed templars and Tevinter mages. He didn't say much beyond that. Just..." They stare at her expectantly. "He was afraid it would infect him," she finishes. No need to go into details about why he would ask her to perform the final mercy of dispatching him — that would too easily segue into his prior associations with Maile, and that, in turn, would bring up Imshael. Not a topic to discuss in polite company. She catches Solas's eyes on her — he lifts an eyebrow, but fortunately he doesn't comment. All in all, Margo has absolutely no doubt that Torquemada might want to ask the elf about his "roster of linguistic abilities" as well.

"If what he encountered is the same things we saw at Therinfal, then far more templars have turned against the Chantry than we originally thought," Cassandra interjects, her jaw set in a grim expression. "We will ask those loyal to us to weigh in — we need to know how long the transformation takes, should it happen."

"It would depend." Cullen rubs his face with both hands. "Same as with Chantry lyrium, I would imagine — not everyone takes to it equally. Ser Barris's reports mentioned a red liquid. Some templars turned rapidly — a matter of days. Others didn't seem to be much affected, if at all."

"All of this presupposes the capacity to procure red lyrium and to process it." Josephine stands up. "We will make inquiries about supply routes. There are several noble houses in the vicinity of Therinfal, and we have cordial relations with two of them. I am certain that—"

"It matters not at the moment." Torquemada silences the conversation with a quick jerk of her head. She shuts the infirmary door and bolts it shut against surprise visitors. "If Celene's former chevalier is correct, then we must commence a full-scale evacuation at once. Haven can stand up to brigands and opportunistic attacks from small bands of hostiles. It will not weather an army. The only question is how much time remains."

"I do not disagree that we are pressed for time, Leliana, but a full evacuation — as you proposed before — is madness." Cassandra rests her palm on the hilt of her sword. "Without walls and siege machinery, we will leave ourselves exposed. We have civilians to consider, and even with our recruits and the templar contingent, we will be stretched too thin. Whoever marches on us will simply pick us off like nugs."

Torquemada whirls around. "And if you had heeded my warnings instead of wasting your time trying to convince me that I was being paranoid, we would be halfway to Therinfal already."

Cullen throws up his hands in a sudden show of frustration. "Your warnings are based on the half-demented ravings of a mad mage, Leliana! With all due respect..."

Torquemada's expression turns corvid. "The Hero of Ferelden—"

"Oh bugger the Hero of Ferelden!" The former templar detaches himself from the wall and stalks over, his face flushed with sudden, blind anger. "The sodding Hero of Ferelden was a blood mage . I was at Kinloch Hold — do you think I don't remember the slimy little weasel? Uldred's favorite protegé... Though he didn't bat an eye when he had to cut down his mentor, I'll give him that. How could you possibly have trusted anything that came out of the bastard's mouth?"

An awkward silence ensues.

"Because he was right," Leliana enunciates with perfect, icy clarity.

Cassandra shifts uncomfortably. "Cullen... stand down. This isn't about Kinloch or Alim Surana. Leliana has... a point. Haven cannot compare to a fortified keep, and, had we relocated to Therinfal earlier, we would have support from our local allies."

"Positioning ourselves deeper in Ferelden would have cost us our already precarious neutrality vis-a-vis Orlais." Josephine pinches the bridge of her nose. "Which, in our current position, we can scarcely afford."

"This debate is pointless. We must act now, not waste time arguing over what we should have done." The spymaster surveys them all with an oddly satisfied expression — a general confirming that the battlefield is hers, regardless of the ongoing skirmishes.

"Then what do you propose?"

The former bard turns to Lud and fixes her with a cool stare. "Wake up your patient, medic. We do not have the luxury of solicitude."

The dwarven woman returns Torquemada's gaze. Beneath the irascible, efficient facade is a flash of flinty insubordination. "You have your answer already, 's far as I'm concerned. Don't see what waking him up would accomplish, other than robbing him of needed rest."

"We must know how much time we have to prepare, which will determine our strategy. Does that answer satisfy?"

Lud turns away with a pinched look. "If he doesn't make it, it's on you, so that we're clear. Tethras, pass me the salts. They're right there, on the table. No, not that one — the... Yes, that'll do."

Ser Lancelot the Blissfully Sleeping jerks his head away from what must be good old ammonia, judging by the smell. His eyes flutter open — the combination of restoratives and healing magic has healed the swelling and bruises, and he has regained his Nazi poster boy good looks. For a split second, De Chevin's face contorts in utterly abject horror, but then he seems to realize where he is, and he gets ahold of himself. "Is it done?" he asks no one in particular. His eyes search the room frantically until they land on Margo, and they linger on her face with an eerie sort of longing. Then he averts his gaze, and Margo stifles a sigh of relief. Lud and Varric might have a point. Ser Lancelot the Recently Moribund but Doggedly Amorous is starting to make her skin crawl with the lingering-glances routine. The unsettled feeling is probably a side effect of the cosmic shitgibbon's most recent disguises, but still. Not a complication she needs.

"Good as new," Lud grumbles. "Looks like you're in for some questions, Orlais."

De Chevin winces, but then he seems to steel himself. "I will answer to the best of my abilities," he offers after a pause.

Torquemada chooses this moment to switch personas. Gone is the implacable coldness of her earlier interactions with the rest of the Quadrumvirate. In its stead, the bardic affectations soften her face into something youthful and almost contrite, and when she speaks, her tone is a perfect mixture of apologetic but firm. "I wish we had met under more favorable circumstances, Messere de Chevin. Forgive me my curtness — we have little opportunity for pleasantries."

The former chevalier nods.

"What have you learned of this army?"

"They move through the Deep Roads." He swallows — a labored, parched sound. "They answer to something they call the Elder One. I cannot say for certain how large his army is, but it is nothing you would be able to withstand. Not here, in any case. The army's mages alone are well-trained and deadly, and that's not accounting for the templars. The men who attacked me..." He frowns, perhaps at the memory. "They asked me about the Herald. Offered me my life in return for information. If I were to make a guess, I would assume she is their primary objective."

"And how far is this army, in your estimation?"

De Chevin hesitates. "Three days," he says with lead in his voice. "Four at the most."

Margo frowns. Not that Ser Lancelot the Wounded Yet Remarkably Swift would have any reason to lie, but how exactly did he get here so fast?

"I take it the dead horse at the gates was yours?" Rutherford asks. Apparently, his mind went in the same direction.

"It is. I did not have the luxury of rest."

Lud cuts a disapproving glance at the spymaster, but then her attention returns to her patient. "Precisely, Orlais. So now that you've satisfied everyone's curiosity, you are going back to sleep. You can walk, can't you? Here." The medic maneuvers her patient into a sitting position, and drapes his arm over her shoulders. "That cot in the corner should do well. Less yammering. Alchemist, pass me the sedative, will you? No, no, the clay bottle. That's it."

Margo does as instructed. The bottle in question puts her in mind of a miniaturized amphora. Lud grabs it from her before leading de Chevin to a recently vacated bed at the back of the room. Once he is settled in, the medic unstoppers the amphora, and passes it under the former chevalier's nose. Based on the fact that Ser Lancelot the Apathetic is adopting a distinctly pre-Raphaelite sprawling position, Margo decides that the bottle contains the local analogue of chloroform.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have things to burn." And with that, the medic retires to a back room with the mess of lyrium-stained rags.

Torquemada waits for a few heartbeats. "Then I suppose it is settled."

"Three days will put us a third of the way to Therinfal." Cullen has managed to regain an air of brute efficiency. He paces the length of the long, narrow room, a hand at the back of his neck. He gestures as he speaks. "If Trevelyan is the primary target, then we must either get her out of the way, and fast, or..." He looks up. His face registers momentary surprise — as if he had completely forgotten where he was. Under the interrogative gazes of the other advisers, his cheeks flush with color. "We might consider... ahem. Some alternative solution…"

"What alternative solution, Cullen?" Cassandra frowns.

Cullen hesitates, his eyes darting to Varric — and then to Margo. He averts his gaze quickly, his discomfiture overridden by a flash of irritation. "We can discuss it later."

"Everyone here has demonstrated their loyalty to the cause, Cullen, have they not?" Torquemada interjects in a tone that manages to be both reassuring and menacing. "And we have little time for word games. Speak your mind."

The former templar rubs the back of his neck. He braces himself, like a man on the edge of precipice, contemplating the jump. "Ahem. We might be forced to sacrifice some… strategic assets."

Cassandra's eyes widen. "Tell me you are not seriously suggesting what I… the Herald?"

"Cullen!" Josephine almost drops her quill — Varric catches it in mid-fall and returns it to the ambassador with a dramatic flourish. The smile never makes it to the upper half of his face — in fact, his expression is frozen in something awfully close to shock. Josephine's own return smile is visibly perfunctory — an automatic habit of politeness. "Have you forgotten about the rifts?"

Rutherford's earlier anger returns with dividends — there in the sudden smattering of red over his cheekbones — but he keeps himself in check otherwise. "The Breach is closed. With enough research and troops, the rifts might be... contained. Or at least minimized. Besides, Trevelyan is..." He makes an expansive sort of gesture, halfway between incredulity and helplessness. "Well, she is divisive, isn't she? She has served her purpose, but it doesn't change..."

"That she is a mage," Torquemada cuts in. "Is that it, Commander?"

He spins around. "She is a mage who is resistant to the templar smite, Leliana! She has no training, and yet she makes the dead dance like they're nothing but..." He cuts himself off and pivots to Cassandra. "Won't you speak up?"

"Speak up on what? The Mortalitasi? Nevarra? I will not abandon the Herald because it is expedient, Cullen. You overstep."

"Oh, I overstep, do I?" Cullen turns abruptly and paces in the opposite direction. "We have allowed covert assassins to slip into our ranks undetected. The Chantry has declared us a heretical organization. We have garnered barely enough support to keep Haven supplied. 'The Inquisition renewed.' A bloody fine picture we make." He stops. "And now, we are about to be overrun because, somehow, some radicalized Tevinter mage group — no doubt backed by the Magisterium — fancies itself a trophy. Can't you see Trevelyan paints a target on our back? We did what we had to with the Breach, but do we truly need her?"

"Tears in the Veil will not be mended by shouting the Maker's prayers at them, Commander." Heads turn to Solas, and Margo's heart skips a beat. The elf meets her gaze for a split second — he has donned his neutrally polite mask, but for the briefest of moments he lets her see the emotion beneath it. An impossible mixture of wrath and resignation, and a strange, dark sort of sorrow. "I doubt that whatever power caused the Breach has been dispelled. Would you discard the only person capable of closing it again — should it be reopened — just because you take her magic as a personal affront?"

Cullen balls his fists, but then he relaxes his stance, letting his hands hang loosely at his side. He draws a breath. "Trevelyan is unstable ," he spits out. "And I'm not just referring to her magic, whatever its Maker-forsaken nature might be. Am I truly the only one to consider the implications?" He turns to Torquemada. "We've all heard her speak. Have you any idea how dangerous she will become if people actually, Maker forbid, start to listen? And they will listen to the Herald of Andraste. That stunt at the trial — she was deriding the Chant of Light! Making a mockery of it!"

"Now, now," Varric, silent until then, glances over at Josephine. "Let's not rush straight to the catastrophic. It's all in how you spin the story, Curly. Evie just needs a bit of... guidance."

" We put her on trial, Cullen." Cassandra's grip on her weapon tightens, but when she speaks, her tone is remarkably even. "We allowed it to happen. As I recall, it was a joint decision — I heard no dissent from you, in any case. And we orchestrated it. What should the Herald have done? We threw her into the pit and let her fend for herself! And now, you are blaming her for playing the role we foisted on her."

Cullen pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't advocate we leave her to the enemy, whoever he is. Not as an asset, anyway."

The silence is so thick you could use it to armor a tank.

"Speak plainly, Cullen. What are you saying?"

"Now that the Breach is closed... We should reconsider the possibility of Tranquility."

Margo fails to repress a gasp. Varric's eyes widen in stunned horror. Even the ambassador, normally a virtuoso at hitting the exact pitch of social propriety, goes ashen and brings her hand to her mouth.

"Rutherford, you are out of line ." Cassandra takes a step towards the commander, pivoting her hips into something awfully close to a fighting stance.

"Hear me out. I know this is not the ideal solution, but difficult decisions are often the ones that save lives." The ex-templar motions with his hand towards the infirmary door. "Think about it. We can't have an enemy army pursuing us through Ferelden — and if this army is intent on Haven, we can be sure they will be more than ready to pick us off on the road. How many civilians do we have? People who've never held anything more dangerous than a sewing needle or a hoe? There are children , for Maker's sake!" He resumes his pacing. "I'm not suggesting we leave her on a silver platter. Haven will have a garrison. A small, qualified group able to slow the enemy down long enough to buy the rest a passage to safety. Should Haven fall, then so be it, but I will not let it fall without at least making them work for it! If the Rite is undertaken quickly, we do not need to make it public. Trevelyan will still be remembered as the Herald of Andraste, the one to save us from the Breach. I do not like this any more than you do, but if this Elder One wants her... I fear that he will raze anything in his path until he has her, and if Tevinter is behind this, how long before it devolves into a full-scale war? How many more lives will be lost?"

"So, scorched-earth policy, is it?" The words are out before Margo can bite them back. She considers the local version of William Sherman with what she hopes is a passably calm expression. Either Rutherford has lost it completely, or he has been hiding his true colors with an artistry that'd give Torquemada a run for her money. "What else? Will we be stuffing the chantry full of Antivan fire and detonating the whole thing while we're at it, commander? Pity we don't have gaatlok, huh? And while we're on the subject, who will you be volunteering for this garrison? Clemence and the rest of the Tranquil? Maybe some of the mages? Any other political undesirables you would like to dispose of while the rest of you saunter off?"

Torquemada opens her mouth to speak, but Cullen cuts her off. "I don't know how things are done where you come from, agent, but I will not allow anyone unqualified to carry out this task. Nor will I have the men and women under my command do something I would not ask of myself." He draws a breath, then exhales it slowly. "I will remain in Haven with the Herald."

Everyone tries to speak at once.

"Have you gone completely mad ?" Cassandra's voice rises over the collective racket. "Enough. You asked me to intervene if your... decision began to impact your faculties." The tumult quiets down, and heads pivot to the Seeker. The color drains from Rutherford's cheeks, their flush replaced by a ghostly pallor. He goes completely still, but his eyes dart to the bowl of lyrium crystals. The snow beneath them has melted, and they glitter at the bottom of the copper bowl in a puddle of reddish water. Cassandra's tone softens a fraction. "I cannot order you to step down — we cannot afford it. But I strongly urge you to consider whether this...— whatever this is — merits a vote of confidence."

Rutherford stares at Cassandra as if the Seeker just slapped him.

"How long since you stopped taking lyrium, Commander?" Torquemada inquires in a deceptively casual tone. "And when were you planning to share this information with the rest of us, Cassandra?"

The ex-templar flinches.

"Well, shit." Varric takes off his spectacles. No one says anything, so the dwarf finds himself compelled to fill the stunned silence. "You mean... Don't you templars lose it when you're off the stuff? Samson sure was in a bad way, last I saw him."

"I am a templar no longer, Varric. As well you know."

"Could have fooled me," Varric mutters.

Rutherford turns to Torquemada, his expression full of newfound grim resolve. "Long enough that I have learned to function without it." He hesitates. "I swear to you, this is not withdrawal talking. Therinfal is too far, and in the wrong direction. If this army is coming through the Deep Roads, they could simply cut us off. You remember the Blight, Leliana. You know how the darkspawn spill out from under the surface. And that was with half-sentient creatures. With an army of mages, red templars, and Maker knows what else? Organized?" His voice wavers. "It'll be worse. Think of how many lives they will trample on the way if they give chase. No. We have to keep them locked here and occupied. And I'm the most qualified to work the trebuchets into a defense strategy."

"Are you seriously suggesting that, after everything that's happened, we subject Evelyn to the Rite of Tranquility and then deliver her to this Elder One — while you embark on what is effectively a suicide mission yourself?" Josephine's polite, delicate mask cracks, revealing a core of indignant anger. "She has done nothing but help us! Whatever she is now, it was done to her, by people who should have had her best interests at heart!" The ambassador's voice hitches, but she pinches her lips and glares at Cullen.

Rutherford exhales forcefully. "I am not...heartless, Ambassador. I know perfectly well that she is a victim — she should have been put in a Circle like any other child with magic, and not kept like some embarrassing secret under the stairs at a noble's whim. But no amount of sympathy will change the logistics. This is hardly survivable. Not, in any case, without some sacrifices."

The Quadrumvirate glare at each other in silence.

"There may be an alternative to Therinfal." Solas straightens and clasps his hands behind his back. "If it matters."

Cassandra turns sharply. "Speak."

The elf appears to vacillate, but then he inclines his head. "Scout to the north. There is a place that waits for a force to hold it. A place where the Inquisition can... Build. Grow." He hesitates again, then he passes his hand over his face — a weary, wary gesture. "Or, at the very least, where it might endure."

Torquemada narrows her eyes. "My people have scouted the Frostbacks for miles, Solas. There is nothing but glaciers and the occasional group of Avvar hunters. What is this place you speak of?"

"It is known as Skyhold. A fortress, sheltered by a mountain pass. With the correct guide, it will offer you sanctuary."

"And I suppose you have seen it in the Fade?"

"I have." Solas's tone is deceptively mild. "Though any half-decent historian of the Towers Age could confirm its existence." He pauses. "Guide your people there, ahead of this invasion. Any army that would choose to pursue would have to weather an inhospitable landscape. Our relatively modest numbers might afford us a small advantage."

"Provided we can find it," Cullen says sourly. "And provided it is as empty as the mage claims. Three days is not enough to scout. We'd be going in blind, and the Frostbacks are nothing to trifle with this time of year. If we get stranded, we'll simply freeze to death and do this Elder One's work for him."

"What choice do we have?" Cassandra shakes her head in disgust. "Solas, would you be able to find your way there?"

The elf cocks his head to the side. "Perhaps." He lets the pause stretch. His posture shifts — a subtle, almost imperceptible movement towards a fighting stance. Margo has absolutely no doubt that it is carefully calculated. "Though I will not support this plot of abandoning the Herald, let alone of severing her from the Fade. Nor will I advise you to leave anyone behind against their will. These people are under your protection — you do not own their lives." A hard smile etches a line at the corner of his mouth. "Unless, of course, this new Inquisition has taken upon itself to outperform Tevinter in its instrumentality and wishes to add slavery to its list of historical accomplishments? In which case, I fear I have been terribly mistaken in offering my aid."

"Tread carefully, apostate." Cullen's anger flares again, and Margo decides that this must be a chronic problem — though usually better concealed.

"I normally do not take kindly to extortion, Solas, but the alternative you offer, while not devoid of risk, potentially minimizes our losses. Cullen is right in one thing — our chances are better if Haven can be made to buffer the attack."

"We are not leaving Evelyn behind, Leliana." Josephine's eyes glisten, but she has regained her composure.

Torquemada smiles, not at all pleasantly. "Naturally not." She surveys them all, again with that expression of a general assessing a recent victory — and finding its costs acceptable. "No. We will use a decoy."

* * *

 _This chapter was brought to you by a public service announcement: If possible, quitting lyrium cold turkey should not be undertaken without a solid social support structure in place._

 _Next up: All roads lead to hell; or on the perils of good intentions_


	86. Chapter 86: Time, Which Sees All Things

_In which Margo tries to think (but keeps getting interrupted), visits an augur, and passes another alchemy test._

* * *

There are no public meetings. No town halls. No charismatic leader comes to stand in front of the chantry, delivering rousing speeches to the populace or rallying the troops for a final stand for dignity — or, minimally, for survival. No proud banners rise to fly over the palisade. No town crier pierces the unseasonably mild afternoon air with a shrill call to arms. The notes of the midday chant cascade from the temple with familiar, unperturbed resonance.

Instead, the state of emergency lurks in sealed envelopes delivered to key personnel. It settles in grimly pressed lips and rustles in hushed murmurs in dim hallways and back alleys. It courses through the brusque movements of flinty-eyed soldiers, who escort confused civilians towards the requisitions tents. It ripples through the tight circle of anxious faces that surrounds one of Torquemada's agents, the man's expression shrouded in shadows beneath his hood and his tone swaddled in bureaucratic opaqueness as he reads names from a roster. A brief glimpse at the vellum as Margo passes the knot of people lends a half-formed thought — the scroll is too neat and the ink too dry to have been drafted in response to recent developments. Haven pulses to the rhythm of a calculated silence, one kept for so long that no other form of rule is conceivable.

But Margo does not get the chance to contemplate the theater of Torquemada's ascendence to the apex of the Quadrumvirate. She is sent to the apothecary to assist Master Adan, with no further information on her projected position in the impending performance, aside from a terse, "Expect further orders." She walks on legs she barely feels, her thoughts circling purposelessly like agitated birds. What now ?

Solas leaves with the rest of the advisors — though that description seems uniquely ill-suited for their actual roles at this point — with a final backward look. The hierarchy of the Inquisition shifts like sand, but the next steps are clear enough: to inform Evie of the plans formulated in her absence and with none of her input. No doubt strategically omitting the whole Tranquility proposal, too. The elf offers Margo a parting, "We will speak again, lethallan," delivered in a noncommittal tone from beneath a mask of neutral affability but with the slightest overemphasis on " again ," marking the word for her ears only. She casts an uneasy glance at Rutherford's retreating back, still visible through the open doorway, and then she returns her attention to Solas, her eyes lingering on his. She nods once. Be careful , she doesn't say.

She finds herself outside the infirmary, with no clear memory of exiting — trudging through melting snow under a cloud of dense, wordless anger. Fuck. How did she get this so wrong? How did she manage to convince herself that Evie's mark would protect the kid — that, by virtue of being indispensable, the young woman would have the time and space to come into her own, to slowly make room for her voice until it would be heard — and heeded? How unforgivably naive for an alleged historian to believe the figurehead could ever ascend to the same level as the forces operating behind the scenes. Not that Margo's own voice has any weight — and not that she had a clear sense of how to help Evie in the first place. But the reassuring self-delusion allowed her to coast. To avoid taking a stand. It's not like the signs weren't there all along, but she played it safe — tucked away into the illusory security of marginal irrelevance, while the organization on whose coattails she's been riding pivoted around a core of... Well. Not "rot," exactly, or "wickedness," or anything quite so bombastic. Debating the Inquisition's moral standing feels like an exercise in absurdist humor. But—

"You alright there, Prickly?" Margo jerks her head up. She was so occupied with fuming that Varric's presence at her side didn't register until he spoke. "If you're contemplating murder — and, based on your face, I'd say you're getting awfully close — may I recommend waiting until nightfall?"

Margo forces herself to take a steadying breath, but the air rushes out of her lungs in a sigh of pure frustration. She regroups, turning to the rogue. "I guess this is your way of saying that I need to work on being a bit more subtle about it?" Her quip lands flat. "Any chance you'll help get rid of the body?"

Varric harrumphs, but his amusement is skin-deep — the man hiding beneath the ironic persona seems long since out of jokes. All that's left is a dry sort of irony, bitter as wormwood. "If we were in Kirkwall, I'd tell you that I just might know a guy..." He exhales through clenched teeth, making a chuckle of it as if in afterthought. "And just when I was starting to think we might have a shot at fixing all this... Well." Varric gestures in abstract incredulity. "At times like these, I seriously question my sanity. Should've stayed far away from this mess."

"Did you have a choice, Varric?" She is still not entirely clear on whether the dwarf volunteered or got himself conscripted. Though one does not necessarily preclude the other, as recent events seem to suggest.

The rogue offers another one of his not particularly humorous smiles. "Well, that's just it, isn't it? Choice is a funny thing. You can 'have' an ale. Or coin in your pocket. You can 'have' a charming personality, or dashing good looks." He winks. "Can you actually 'have' a choice, Prickly?"

Margo stuffs her hands into her pockets, but she makes sure to return Varric's half-smile, even if the expression fits about as well as a tuxedo on a pig. This talk of choice has the unpleasant side effect of conjuring thoughts of the Cosmic Shitgibbon, and, by association, of Ser Lancelot the Bearer of Dire News, and then of red lyrium. And, from there, the dream of the infected Tree. What is that thing? The thought, urgent now, ricochets across her mind, garnering no answer but sending her right back to where they started — the impending attack by a red-lyrium-riddled army. Has Alexius's modeling been right all along, then? Perhaps the mad magister actually managed to anticipate the craptastic future correctly and this — this moment — is the early stirrings of that unfolding trajectory? One that will lead to ugly deaths for most, and uglier outcomes for those who have the misfortune of surviving...

"I suppose 'possession' isn't exactly the right idiom, is it?" Margo manages. Wittgenstein's words in Amund's voice resonate with the unbidden insistence of a memorized mantra. She doesn't have time for hypotheticals, one way or another. That future is not there yet.

"In my experience, Prickly, possession is never the right idiom." Varric lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Anyway, don't let me hold you up — we have an escape to plan." He squints, his expression cagey. "I don't know where they're putting you, but... I'll make some inquiries. Who knows, maybe they'll stick us together — along with all the other folks the Inquisition has no idea what to do with." Judging by his tone, the dwarf finds that possibility rather unlikely.

"Thanks, Varric." Margo collects herself, and the smile she shapes feels at least passably genuine. "I hope you have a way to get your books out."

Varric claps her on the shoulder. "See, Prickly, that's what I like about you. You've got your priorities straight." With that, the rogue departs towards his tent.

Instead of immediately following Torquemada's orders, Margo pokes her head into the tavern. Sera is absent, but Flissa sends her down to the smithy with a shrug and a harried expression. Check there.

The unexpected thaw has turned Haven's unpaved streets into muddy mush, the reddish clay painting the snow in russet streaks, and the rusty color sends a twinge of foreboding across Margo's spine. She jogs to the forge, boots squishing unpleasantly in the melting, muddy snow, the northern breeze soft on her skin. The air is heavy with moisture and the scent of warming earth. Unless the night brings another freeze, the village will be knee-deep in mud by the following morning.

She slows down next to the stables. The few horses that remain are restless. A bay mare with her front legs encased in standing wraps shakes her head from side to side and rolls her eye at Margo's approach.

The forge is eerily silent. Blackwall and a few of Master Harritt's apprentices are loading a rough-hewn cart with weapons and armor pieces. The blacksmith and a spotted, gangly youth with a shock of ginger hair are disassembling one of the forming presses. The contraption they use for improving weapons is lying in parts in the low bed of the cart.

Blackwall spots her first, and Margo waits for him to finish his task. At length, the Warden approaches. He leans a shoulder against the stable's fence and cocks a dark eyebrow at his visitor. The bay mare takes this opportunity to nose at his shoulder with an impatient snort, clearly angling for a treat or a scratch. Blackwall pats the horse's neck with absentminded familiarity. "Hope your head's feeling better than mine, agent. What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for Sera." The thought of why she wants to find Sera rattles around, half-formed — nothing like a plan, only a hunch and the vague need to do something . "Have you seen her?"

"Not since this morning. Fuzzhead woke me up by dumping snow on my face — not that I'm complaining, all things considered. Took off after that. Want me to pass on a message?"

Margo chews the inside of her cheek, suddenly doubtful and weighing the next question. What are the chances that Sera was accidentally up early enough to wake up Blackwall after a night of heavy celebratory drinking? Varric mentioned that notes were delivered to strategic people with orders of moderation. He never mentioned whom the notes came from — though it was implied. Now, Sera's Friends, from what Margo understands, are a network of informants — unremarkable ones, unlike Torquemada's hooded spies. Sera's people — those who sweep floors and launder linens and, perhaps, clean the rubbish generated by the scribes — would be easy to overlook. "Blackwall, when did the order to pack up the forge come in?"

The warden's eyes narrow. "Early this morning. I would've slept right through it, if not for Sera."

Factoring in the time treating De Chevin's wounds, it adds up. Her hunch, then, was correct — the scene in the infirmary must have been orchestrated. Torquemada decided to act on Ser Lancelot the Fleet's bad news as soon as he showed up, if not earlier, effectively sidestepping the rest of the Quadrumvirate while they were occupied with arguing. It bears asking how much the spymaster's willingness to let Rutherford put forth his Tranquilization solution was a way of keeping the powers that be tied up in one place and unable to interfere with whatever the Left Hand had already set in motion elsewhere.

As to the rest... Hungover people are less likely to question orders. Or have the mental and physical bandwidth to panic.

Margo takes her leave of the Warden, trying to intuit the choreography of Torquemada's plan. A quick survey of the camp — swarming in purposeful if somewhat confused agitation — fails to turn up Sera, and Margo finds herself hesitating, suddenly caught between two contradictory impulses. The cautious side of her wants to do what she's been told — if she is to subvert directives, best make it a quiet, unobtrusive subversion, the resistance of subtly added friction. But the other side, the one stirring beneath with the cold, calculating anger of disillusioned pragmatism — grown untended from the memory of a thin, rancid straw pallet, from the sharp end of a spoon used for digging a tunnel, from the sour leer of a man with flat, reptilian eyes — is not particularly inclined to obedience. Problem is, she has no idea how to channel the emotion productively. Grab Evie and make a run for it, as Sera once suggested? Untenable. Find out about how the distribution of the Inquisition's "disposables" shakes out as the decoy strategy is implemented... And do what with it, exactly? Warn the right people? Argue with Torquemada? Flee?

And what, besides, did the spymaster mean by "a decoy"?

The thought is so sudden it halts Margo in her tracks. The pair of soldiers who were walking behind her practically trip over her suddenly still form. One of the men swears, though without particular anger — watchit, rabbit — and pushes her out of the way with barely a look. They hurry on towards the trebuchets. Margo steps into the shadow of the palisade, rubbing her bruised shoulder. Is Torquemada factoring in Evie's hex — or luck suck, as Sera would have it? Because if she is, then she must realize that the highest risk is not to Evie herself — or even to whomever or whatever might serve as the decoy — but to whomever comes with their lethally lucky Herald.

Solas must realize this. Cassandra, too.

Would Evie be safer inside Haven or outside of it? Perhaps the key question, then, is about National Hero's predictive capacities. Supposing that he knew about an attack on Haven in some hypothetical future beyond his reach, and supposing that he decided to prepare a ward for it — how much did he foresee? Did he predict Evie? Would smuggling Evie out ahead of the attack launch them on a different path from the one National Hero was anticipating — along a different branch of the Tree, to use the thrice-cursed dendritic horror for metaphorical purposes? Or will they have an Oedipus-style outcome on their hands?

Margo closes her eyes. Her head pounds with the circular logic of the potential temporal paradox — round and round it goes, chasing its tail. So. National Hero was a blood mage. Did he inherit blood magic like she inherited Maile's linguistic knowledge and murderous reflexes? Minimally, it explains why he was able to construct the ward. But what eventuality was the ward meant to address? The Breach? Keeping Haven safe from maddened spirits and red lyrium eruptions? Keeping it from an attack? But if so, how ? The Writhing Farthingale of Supreme Creepiness certainly doesn't prevent people from entering or leaving — based on evidence gathered, a physical army would march through Haven and not even notice the ward was there. So what is it for ? And it invites the rather obvious other question — what, exactly, did National Hero know, and why did he know it? If he was like her, was it simply that he snatched a body capable of seeing the future? Or were his insights something that came with him across worlds? Goran did mention National Hero's affinity with the Tree... And what of Leliana herself? Hypothetically speaking, if National Hero was trying to prevent something from happening, and if he implemented the blood ward for that purpose, then is Torquemada acting with or againsthis prophecy?

The decision comes to her like something floating up from murky depths, and Margo lets her legs carry her forward, up the road and back towards the dark, jagged tree line behind the temple. She squints against the snowy glare until she spots the triangle of Amund's fur tent and the wispy smoke of his campfire about five hundred meters up the slope.

By the time she reaches the campsite, Margo is winded and sweating beneath her leather coat. She finds Amund sitting placidly on a tree stump. He passes her a skin of ale, his face creased in wordless amusement, and she gulps down the liquid greedily before handing the skin back.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, little spider?" the augur inquires. His dark eyes are remote and unreadable, and he seems unhurried and otherwise unperturbed. If he has an opinion of recent developments, it doesn't show.

"You know we're evacuating, right?" The question is only one on the technicality of syntax.

Amund inclines his head. "Compassion said as much."

"Where is Cole, actually?"

Amund shrugs. "Wherever he must be."

Margo fidgets in place. The wind rustles in the pines above, breathing resin and snowmelt. "When are you leaving?" she asks.

"It depends." The Avvar glances at the sky. "Would that I had convinced you to abandon this Inquisition when time was on our side, spinner." Above them, dark dots soar in a wide circle against the soft blue. "Though I doubt you'd have heard reason," he remarks with good-natured mockery. "And I suppose I am too old to spirit you away in the dead of night — besides, I would've had to take you for a wife, then." His eyes glint with quiet humor. But," he adds more seriously, "it would have spared us what is to come."

Margo swallows. "Amund..." she hesitates. "Query your Lady for me, would you? I'm..."

Lost she wants to say. Lost, and uncertain, and unable to understand the messages this insane world keeps flinging at her in dreams and in cryptic letters — or why she should be their recipient. Can't the universe find another pen pal? Or, minimally, provide her with an interpreter?

The Avvar measures her with a narrow-eyed look. "Are you sure prophecy is what you wish?" A cautionary note creeps into his voice.

Margo nods.

At length, he fishes out a small cloth parcel from inside his coat, unfolding it on his knees. The thin bird bones, yellow with age and worn to a smooth ivory polish, fall into unreadable glyphs in his large palms. "Ask your question, then."

Tell me which branch we sing from, augur . The voice in her head doesn't quite feel like her own. She shakes it off and the question dies on her lips. She stares at the bones, amorphously furious with the lingering sense of helpless disorientation, with the lack of opportunity to sit and think through it all properly. Ask how? Ask what? "Just... tell me what I need to know."

Amund bends forward, sets a strip of felt onto the snow at his feet, and tosses the bones onto it. He traces the patterns with his eyes, one palm scraping thoughtfully against the beginning of a greying stubble. "Too many lies, little spider, and not just yours. Mind who does the speaking. The net will hold, but blessings and curses are simply two sides of one blade. For you, two roads from here, both bloody." He looks up from his scrying, his jaw set. Margo tries and fails to keep her expression neutral. Whatever Amund finds in her face, his own softens a fraction. "I yet owe you skuld, spinner," he notes gravely. "I shall not desert you, however the bones fall. And then, perhaps, we shall be even."

Margo finds her way back to Haven in a daze of buzzing thoughts.

A net . Goran had called the ward a net. Had the old man — or whoever he really is — not known for certain? Why did he formulate the next part as a question? "Keep in, or keep out?" Idle speculation, or a provocation specifically aimed at her? Ask good questions.

Fine. What is a net used for? For keeping things out. Or for catching things.

The only other model she has for understanding the blood ward is, paradoxically enough, the Veil. Perhaps not a perfect analogy, but the similarities are there, aren't they? It too was supposedly designed by the proverbial Maker to keep something at bay — the world of spirits, according to the established explanation. It too had, until recently, a giant hole in it. It begs the question — is it possible that the Tentacled Dome of Considerable Foulness actually mimics the Veil itself? Or mimics some of its mechanisms? And, if so, then what sort of magic might have been used to create the Veil in the first place?

Maybe Solas or Dorian would have some ideas on the subject, if she can track either of them down in the mad rush of preparation.

Keep in or keep out?

Margo forces her body into motion. Is the Veil truly meant to keep spirits out of the physical world? Or is it the opposite? Spirits, after all, fall into the material realm with enviable regularity. With unpleasant consequences for everyone, to be sure, but... Why is the reverse not happening at the same frequency? If the Veil was indeed fabricated, what if its purpose is the opposite of Chantry doctrine? What if it's not meant to keep spirits out , but fleshlings in ? Might spirits be benefiting from the Veil's protection?

A vivid image of Baba's vegetable garden blooms in her mind's eye. The crude, sunworn black plastic thrown over the strawberry beds. Small, tender bushes starred with white poke out from circular holes like perfect little green spheres. Beneath the plastic, naked earth where the weeds remain light-starved.

If the Fade is the source of magic, then—

"Oi! There you are!"

Margo is wrenched out of her thoughts with a start. Somehow, her feet have carried her to the courtyard in front of the apothecary, and she finds herself staring mutely at Adan, who looms in the doorway, looking particularly disheveled and even more hungover than usual. Despite the shadows darkening his eyes and hollowing out his cheeks, his expression is focused and purposeful. He beckons her with a quick twist of his head. "Don't just stand there; we have very little time."

Margo follows him inside. Formulating a plan of action while trying to pick apart the snarls of disjointed thoughts is an exercise in futility. Time. I need time to think .

But time she doesn't have.

The shop is barely recognizable. Ingredients have been pulled off the shelves, stuffed into sacks and crates, everything piled haphazardly at the entrance. Adan is in the midst of packing the glassware with felt and straw. Clemence, silent and seemingly indifferent, is bent over a ledger, presumably writing up the inventory. Minaeve is absent — likely tending to her own research and livelihood.

"I'm sorry I missed most of the packing," Margo ventures, with a sudden pang of guilt. In her rather aimless meanderings, she had ignored one of her primary social obligations. No matter what the Inquisition's Finest might want from her otherwise, Adan took her in. She owes him.

The alchemist shakes his head in dismissal. "Never mind that for now. Clemence, you'll bear witness, as agreed." The alchemist carefully avoids Margo's gaze. "Listen up, fledgling. I'm going to ask you some questions as we work, and you are going to answer them correctly , every single bloody one of them, so that there are absolutely no inquiries later. Do you understand me?"

"Not quite," Margo offers cautiously, her shoulders tense and her palms clammy with a sudden jolt of fear. What is this about?

"Trust me, if I could, I'd do this properly, but there's no time for 'properly,' so here we are. You finish packing these while we chat. I'll start taking apart the work station. First question. Antivan Fire. Main formula and three alternatives."

Margo rattles off the standard formula, conjuring up Auntie's writing and illustrations in her mind's eye. She adds the improvements Adan has made, the addition of two other plants — dawn lotus for stability and dragonthorn to make the flames burn hotter.

A test, then, but why? Why did Adan decide to test her now of all possible times?

He offers no explanation. More questions follow as they work — intermittent, punctuating the slow, fastidious labor of tearing down the apothecary. She glances at the alchemist. His lips are pinched in a grim scowl.

The reality of her situation hits Margo with full force when Adan opens a window and a gust of wet, snowy air dispels the familiar smells of elfroot and sulfur and myrrh resin. The hut looks more and more like an empty shell, an uninhabited carapace already containing within it its future ruin. One way or another, they are leaving. This part of her new life is over.

Margo bites back a sudden pang of sorrow, focusing on Adan's next question. Not that all of his inquiries are equally easy, but they are nothing compared to the challenge of her first test, where she was asked to produce the formula that ended up conjuring Imshael. She trips up on a question about bezoars, but she draws on her memories of her world's alchemical histories to fill in the blanks. "Mostly not very useful, as far as I know. Might help against some poisonings, but won't do much good otherwise," she ventures, her heart hammering in her throat. Except for lyrium, their minerals seem close enough — close enough, anyway, that it's likely that they might have arsenic, or something like it. Not that the experiments with bezoar and arsenic were ever particularly conclusive, from what she recalls, but... "It could help with some mineral poisons, I suppose," she adds cautiously.

Adan looks up. "I've not taught you that, fledgling." But then he returns his attention to his work, his jaw set.

"No," Margo agrees. "You haven't."

A few more questions about processing follow, but they are simple — he keeps them to what he knows she knows. Finally, Adan straightens, pressing his palms into his lower back with a wince. "Congratulations, Journeyman Duvalle. Clemence, will you confirm?"

Clemence lifts his head from his writing, fixing his calm eyes on Margo. "Agent Duvalle certainly passed, Master Adan, but the test was too simple. Not up to the standards of Journeyman rank. I am afraid that..."

"Clemence." Adan pins the Tranquil with a heavy stare. "The standards are the Senior Alchemist's decision."

"Were she taking the test in a Circle..."

"She's not taking the test in a Circle. She's not a mage."

"No." The Tranquil pauses, strangely. "Not a mage." An awkward silence falls between them. "As you say," he relents with the barest touch of coldness to his tone — though it might be the habitual indifference of Tranquility.

"Adan, what is this about? Why now?" Margo fits a lid over the last box of glassware, and she reaches for a hand hammer left on the floor next to a pile of discarded rags.

Adan rummages around in the satchel tied around his waist, coming up with a handful of crude nails. He hands them to her, his expression clouded with unease. "Got the order to pack mid-morning." He hesitates. "And then, right around noon, I got a message from your archer friend, while you were... doing whatever it was you were doing instead of reporting to your post." Adan's squint registers a mild rebuke. "Had a feeling it might come to this, but I'd hoped... Well, never mind that." He turns. "Clemence, please check outside and see if you can track down a courier. We'd better get the news to the ambassador — journeyman, not apprentice. Let's make sure the record is straight."

The Tranquil rises to his feet and proceeds outside without a word. Once the door closes behind him, Adan returns his attention to Margo, the odd tension still in his face. "Don't know how that Sera lass got the information, but... You might have noticed we're leaving Haven, yeah?"

Margo smiles sourly. "I may have suspected."

The alchemist greets her jape with an unwilling chuckle. "Haven's no stronghold. Some of us knew it was coming, sooner or later — I'd hoped later. Anyway, there's an order to who leaves and when." He averts his gaze, letting it roam across the shelves still full of books. They have yet to pack his library. For a brief moment, he seems incredulous and a little lost, but he masters himself quickly. "We have a few days, so not everyone is leaving together. A few convoys leave tonight." He pauses. "Master craftsmen and journeymen are tomorrow morning."

Margo swallows, her throat dry. "And the apprentices?"

"The day after, I'd guess. Not with us, in any case."

"Why so spread out?" But the answer is obvious. To make Haven look inhabited for as long as possible. She doesn't wait for him to confirm her suspicions. "How are all the separate groups going to find each other? Afterwards, I mean?"

"There are tunnels under Haven that lead into the mountains. A pilgrimage route, according to Chancellor Roderick." He shakes his head. "A load of horseshite, that. What sort of pilgrims scurry around in tunnels like field mice? And what sort of pilgrims build tunnels wide enough to leave enough room for horses and carts? It's an escape route put it by the dragon cult — for when the Chantry came a-knocking, which believe you me it did."

Margo nods. It would certainly explain why the Disciples of Andraste survived for as long as they did. "And what about the people with no rank? What about the... regular workers? When do they leave?"

Adan doesn't look at her when he answers. "I don't know. But as far as you're concerned, fledgling, you're my responsibility. I should have gotten you through the examination earlier. That's on me."

"Adan..." Margo forces her clenched jaw to loosen. "How they're doing this, it's not... the whole thing, it's... unconscionable. " The words get stuck half-way, the helpless outrage suddenly welling up inside her again. An unbidden memory of Redcliffe stirs and swells in her throat until breathing becomes hard labor.

Adan shakes his head once. "It's war, lass. It is what it is."

They finish the rest of the work in silence. Clemence returns, his mission apparently accomplished. They break for food in the late afternoon — a simple fare of bread and hard cheese and the perennial winter vegetables, pickled in sharp, tangy brine. Adan passes around a clay jug of weak ale.

They pack the library last.

A rhythmic creak punctuated by a few irritable snorts heralds the arrival of a cart. Margo looks through the window. The shaggy coat of something that appears to be a druffalo hybrid — though a hybrid with what isn't particularly clear — blots out the waning light. The local ruminant rumbles a gutteral call, something between a bray and a growl.

Above, the evening's first pale stars wink in the darkening sky.

Margo follows Adan outside. She is entirely unsurprised to see Blackwall, his hand resting on the animal's harness, standing by the cart. "Need help, Adan?" the Warden asks.

"Almost done here. As long as you and I manage to lift that accursed ingredient mill." The alchemist thrusts his thumb over his shoulder where the aforementioned contraption rests in the snow, wrapped in cloth and padded with straw against potential damage. Clemence and Adan got it this far, but the alchemist, as it turned out, has a bad back. Adan turns to Margo. "Go, fledgling. Get some rest." He hesitates. "While you can."

"But I will see you tomorrow morning, right?"

"Better you not oversleep," Adan counsels dryly. "You're not with us, are you, Warden?"

The warrior shakes his head. Margo turns to Blackwall, trying to stuff that feeling of lost helplessness as far down as it will go. "May I ask when..." She trails off.

"Tonight." Blackwall clears his throat. "Bull, the Chargers, and some of Cullen's men." His expression strikes her as strange. "We go to Therinfal," he offers after a moment, in a deceptively light tone.

So that's part of Torquemada's decoy strategy — to divide up the evacuation so that the enemy will have to make an educated guess as to where to strike, and when. Like a shell game — guess which container isn't empty. Except, of course, considering this is no doubt Torquemada's doing, the shell game is probably rigged. Still, the entire scheme depends on a careful evaluation of disposability.

"With the Herald," Blackwall adds, as if in afterthought.

Margo's stomach drops. Either the Warden is outright lying on purpose, or... or he doesn't know that Evie is not headed that way. Unless... She opens her mouth to reply, and then she closes it. "Are you Andrastean, Warden?" she manages.

He nods slowly. "Not an especially good one, I'm afraid, but yes, I suppose I am."

"Then Andraste be with you," she says through cold lips.

He inclines his head slightly. "And may your gods be with you, agent. Maker willing, we'll meet again."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** My sincere apologies for the slow updates. I cross-post this from AO3, where the story is currently in a bit of a hiatus. You could catch up with the remaining chapters (I write under the pseud paraparadigm - if you want to binge-read the rest, you can find RAGT under the same title, or by doing an author's search).

As always, thank you for your follows, reviews, favs, and reading eyes!


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